


An Heir And In The Same Breath Regret

by FeathersMcStrange



Category: Castle
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Case Fic, Ensemble Cast, F/M, Family Dinners, Family Drama, Family Secrets, Friendship, Gen, Happy Ending, Meet the Family, Murder, Protective Team, Team as Family, Universe Alteration, Verbal Abuse, no spoilers post 6x10, pre-6x11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-08 05:22:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1128829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeathersMcStrange/pseuds/FeathersMcStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(AU backstory for one character, warnings at the beginning of every chapter)</p>
<p>One day, Kevin Ryan goes for lunch. Nobody knows where he's gone or why, but when he returns, something is different. Something's happened. And nobody, not his friends, not his partner, not even his wife knows what's going on with him. Then a murder comes across their desks, and suddenly the entire team is thrown into a life they hadn't known belonged to one of their own, a past best left in the past, and things he would rather not bring to light are laid bare for all to see.</p>
<p>Nothing is the way it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Because exactly what I needed in my life was another multichapter fanfic. Ah well. I digress. This fic is set between episode ten and episode eleven of season six. Within these words you will find no spoilers for episode eleven (Under Fire) save that it was one of the best episodes of anything I have ever seen in my life which is saying a lot given the copious amounts of television I watch.
> 
> Anyhow.
> 
> Please do leave a comment and tell me what you think!

>  god grew lonely
> 
> in the days before light
> 
>  
> 
> so he made himself **an heir**
> 
>  
> 
> **and in the same breath**
> 
> invented **regret**.
> 
> \- tumblr user screwballdame

Chapter One

When it happened, the change was immediate and obvious. Kevin Ryan had always been a quiet man, but after returning from lunch one day he shut down, hardly speaking a word that wasn't prompted of him. Even for him that was unusual, and after failing to rise to several comments from Javier, his co-workers became concerned. In theory it had been just another Tuesday on which they were just catching up on paperwork, and Kevin had left early, presumably to have lunch with Jenny. They did that whenever they could (not often, they both had rather busy schedules, though Jenny had cut back a bit on hours since she had entered her third trimester), and no one saw anything odd about it.

The oddness began when he returned. Kevin walked into the station stiff backed and tight lipped, the strangest expression they had ever seen him wear on his paler-than-usual face. He looked for all the world as if he had just seen a ghost, and not one he was particularly keen on encountering again. Brushing off various inquiries by Javier, Kate, and Rick, he had sat down at his desk and opened one of the files stacked there, methodically filling in answers and checking boxes. All evidence suggested he hadn't gone to seen Jenny, and when asking him only resulted in his posture going even straighter than it already had been and a clipped 'nowhere important', they decided to leave it be. Javier hadn't been happy with leaving it at that but Kate, who had always had the best grasp of 'tact' of the four of them, had told him to drop it. 'If what's going on is really important, he'll tell you eventually. If it's dangerous and for whatever reason he won't talk to us, you can bet Jenny will call you,' she had said, and it made sense, so Javier had backed off.

Later, he would wish he hadn't.

But none of them knew that yet, so they merely carried on with life as usual, moving through stacks of paperwork and puzzling out a fresh case. About three days after the sudden shift in Kevin's behavior, Javier got the call Kate had predicted. 

Jenny sounded worried on the other end, the concern thick enough that even through the slight distortion of a phone line, Javier could tell something was up. The phone rang at his desk while Kevin was momentarily elsewhere, but just in case he took it into the break room, answering it just before it could ring out.

“Hey, Jenny. Is something wrong? Do I need to go get Kevin?”

It wasn't like it was his fault if Kevin's increasing nerves over her approaching due date had gotten to him a bit. Besides, what with the strange way things had been the last few days, god only knew what it could be about.

“Actually, it's about Kevin.” Her tone was troubled, and Javier frowned, looking out the window of the break room to see Kevin walk back and sit down at his desk. A million different scenarios ran through his head, most of them ending very badly for his friend. Before he could let his imagination get the better of him, Javier shook himself and refocused on the phone call.

“What's up? Is he okay?”

“That's sort of why I'm calling. I'm worried about him, Javi,” Jenny confessed. “He's been acting funny. I know you've got to have noticed it, right? But whatever it is, he won't talk to me about it. I tried to get him to the day it started and he all but begged me not to ask. Has he said anything to you?”

“No, he hasn't,” Javier said, shooting another glance out the window to be sure nobody was coming in. He didn't like discussing his best friend with his wife behind the man's back, but Jenny was a friend too now, and she sounded really worried. And if he hadn't been equally as worried before, he was now. “He went out somewhere to lunch a couple'a days ago and he's been kinda strange ever since.”

“Oh. Oh, okay.” She seemed to be regrouping, having held out with the hope that maybe Kevin had mentioned something to Javier that he hadn't said to her. “I just wish he would _talk_ to me. I wish I knew what was going on.”

There wasn't much the detective could think to do but repeat Kate's assurances of three days ago, putting as much confidence in the words as he could muster. Certainly more than he had felt when they'd been said them to him.

“I'm sure that if something's really wrong he would have told you. 'Sides, you know Kevin. He'll fess up when he's ready.”

Jenny seemed to be at least partially satisfied by this answer. “Alright. Just... Keep an eye on him, please?”

“You know I will. Bye Jenny.”

“Bye Javi. Thanks.”

Hanging up the phone, Javier walked slowly back out of the break room towards his desk, trying to process what Jenny had said to him. Whatever it was he wasn't even talking to _her_ about it, which made the whole thing a lot more serious than he had initially thought. Something was going on with Kevin and he wouldn't tell anyone about it, which meant that, for the time being at least, all Javier could do about the situation was do as Jenny asked and keep an eye on him.

When he sat back down, Kevin didn't ask where he had been. One more hint in the middle of a hundred others that his mind wasn't all the way there at the moment. Kevin _always_ asked where he'd been, where anyone'd been. No matter how long they were gone, if he didn't know what was up, Kevin asked. Not this time. This time he stared at his desk, at the form he had finished filling out five minutes ago.

Kate returned with Rick a few moments later and though he couldn't possibly have forgotten about it, his conversation with Jenny was all but shoved to the back of his mind. The situation was put on a back burner for another few days, until almost exactly a week after Kevin's mystery lunch. The case sounded normal, a body found in an alley. However when Kate and Rick got to the scene, they found out pretty quickly that it was going to be anything but.

…

The afternoon was crisp and quiet, or as quiet as it ever got in New York City, in the middle of January. Kate Beckett pulled her coat collar up and sipped her coffee.

“I'm just saying,” Rick said persuasively, moving along in a sort of sideways shuffle so he could look at her and not trip at the same time.

“I am not getting married on a boat. I don't even _like_ boats.”

“Come on, everybody loves boats! Think about it. Twinkling lights. Lapping waves. Bioluminescent phytoplankton.”

“Bioluminescent _what_?”

Rick was stopped before he could continue by Lanie, who got up and walked around to stand between the two of them and the body, blocking their view.

“What can you tell me?” Kate asked her friend, a little put off by Lanie shielding them from the body.

“White male, I'd say mid to late twenties. No ID, so I'm not entirely sure.” As Kate and Rick made to move around her and inspect the body, Lanie quickly stepped to the side, keeping herself in front of them. “Before you see him, you should probably prepare yourselves. It's a little. Well, I'll just let you see for yourselves.” 

When she finally moved out of the way, they saw instantly why she had been reluctant to let them see the dead man without some form of warning.

His skin was pale and his hair was a dark, rich brown. Astonishingly blue eyes stared sightlessly up at the sky, and the shape of his face was far, far too familiar to be comfortable. In short, he looked like a vaguely altered, younger version of Kevin Ryan.

“He...” Rick trailed off, staring at the dead man, thoroughly weirded out by the whole situation. “He looks...

“Just like Ryan,” Kate finished for him. It was getting increasingly more uncomfortable for both of them, just standing there staring at the face that reminded them so much of the friend who had been behaving so oddly as of late, and so they turned to Lanie, who was back to crouching beside their latest victim's right hip. 

“Do you have cause of death?” asked Kate in an attempt to divert back to the case at hand, rather than the matter of the eerie resemblance. 

“Stabbed twice in the abdomen, then shot once in the chest. Neither of the stab wounds would'a killed him though, at least not right away. Hurt like hell, but if he tried to run he probably could have still gotten at least a little ways. The gunshot's what finished him off.”

Just then, footfalls heralded the approach of Kevin and Javier. Despite the fact that he was still acting funny, he seemed to have gotten himself together, at least a little bit, and was even smiling at a comment of Javier's. Kate and Rick turned instantly to look at them, shuffling so that they stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking the unknown dead man from the other two detectives' view.

“Morning Esposito, Ryan,” Rick said, faux-casually. They caught on instantly, both immediately trying to see around their friends.

“You might want to-” Kate was cut off as she was sidestepped, unable to stop or warn them before they saw the body. Too late, they had already seen him. 

Kate, Rick, and Lanie were all silent as they watched Javier and Kevin's faces change. Javier looked equal parts shocked and horrified, shooting a look from the victim to his partner then back to the victim again. The resemblance was undeniable, from the shapes of their noses to the color of their eyes. And then there was Kevin.

The man stood stock still, frozen where he'd halted upon seeing the cold, slack face. His eyes were wide and he looked for all the world as if a ghost he'd thought long dead had swooped down and alit on the ground before him. 

“Like I was telling Beckett and Castle,” Lanie said slowly, keeping a careful eye on the two new arrivals, waiting to see if she should stop and give them a moment. “I couldn't find any ID, so for now he's a John Doe.”

“There's, ah,” Kevin started, stopping abruptly and swallowing hard. He shifted for a moment, folding his arms, never looking away from the dead man's face. The face that was so eerily like a younger version of his own, like staring into a mirror, or a window years in the past. “There's no need. I, um, I know who he is. His name is Connor. Connor Ryan. He's, ah. He's my brother.”

Silence.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...holy quick updating batman. I never get shit done this fast. Must be this fic. Has the writer in be going 'OH MY GOD WE'RE ACTUALLY GETTING THINGS ACCOMPLISHED IN A TIMELY MANNER'. I sincerely hope, for all of our sake, that this is a trend that continues.
> 
> Anyhow, I'll be trying to get back to you guys' lovely comments! I adore each and every one of them and they both brighten my day and help kick my ass into gear with writing this thing.
> 
> Aaaaaand, here is where we see the AU backstory bit rear it's rather unattractive head.
> 
> So.
> 
> Enjoy, and don't forget to leave me a comment! (Also feel free to bug me about updating this on my tumblr. My url is frostlawyer, come be friends! We can talk fics and Castle episodes. :D)

 

>  
> 
> god grew lonely
> 
> in the days before light
> 
> so he made himself  **an heir**
> 
> **and in the same breath**
> 
> invented  **regret**.
> 
> \- tumblr user screwballdame

The ride back to the station was awkward. Kevin said nothing. Javier also said nothing, though several times he opened his mouth as if he was about to then seemingly thought better of it, settling for glancing over at his partner every so often, trying to read his expression. He wanted to get a fix on Kevin's current mental state, where he was at with the whole situation. From the moment it had come to light that the man lying on the cold, rain-damn pavement was his brother, Kevin had shut down. He went still, silent. It was a throw back to the day things had changed so abruptly, only this time it was ten times worse.

They had left the scene early at Javier's suggestion. He had seen the way his best friend had reacted to his brother's body. It wasn't the usual reaction, though. There were no tears. That of itself was surprising to Javier, because although he boasted of being the tougher of the two of them, even he would likely have broken down at least a little upon arriving at the scene of a murdered immediate family member. Coupled with the fact that this was his more sensitive, emotional partner in question, that sent up red flags. No, Kevin didn't seem upset. At least not grieving upset. He seemed... almost  _afraid_.

And that was a thought that didn't sit well with Javier at all. Not a lot of things frightened either of them. Whatever was happening here, whatever had spooked Kevin in the first place, it was connected to his family, if his response to seeing Connor's body was any indication.

Upon arriving back at the 12th, Gates called out for Kevin, motioning for him to come into her office. Receiving a nod from her, Javier followed. Closing the office door after him, he stood beside his friend, keeping quiet. He figured he knew what Gates wanted to talk to Kevin about, and wanted to be there for moral support.

"Detective Ryan, I've received word that yourself, Detectives Esposito and Beckett, and Mr. Castle are investigating the murder of your brother, is that correct?"

"Yes, it is," Kevin said with that same unreadable expression on his face. Gates's normally stern demeanor softened and she gave her subordinate a sympathetic look.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

Kevin looked as if he were about to say something but thought better of it.

"Thank you."

"Unfortunately, due to the conflict of interest, I'm going to have to ask you to step down from this case. I can't have one of my people investigating the death of a family member, it could put the case at risk. You understand? I trust this won't be a problem?" She looked at him expectantly, waiting for an answer.

"No, sir," was his quiet reply. "In fact, I was going to come straight to your office and step down myself."

"Good. I wouldn't want anything to risk this killer being brought to justice and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I will, however, permit you to hang around the station, out of the way, so long as you promise not to directly involve yourself, especially not with any suspects or evidence. Do I make myself clear, detective?"

"Yes, sir." Kevin looked halfway between apprehensive and relieved, all the while maintaining that funny look he'd worn since they had first seen Connor Ryan's body. "Is that all?"

"Yes. If you need to talk to someone, the department has a grief counselor. You'll find her if you need to?"

After Kevin agreed to seek out the grief counselor should the need arise, he swiftly exited the Captain's office. Javier hung back for a moment at a look from Gates.

"You'll keep an eye on him, won't you? He can't run rogue on this."

"Won't be a problem," Javier assured. With a nod from Gates, he left, just in time to spot Kevin disappearing inside the break room, presumably to make coffee. It wasn't too long before Kate and Rick returned from the scene, both of them immediately heading straight for where Javier stood, keeping one eye on his partner as he began to put together the murder board.

"Hey, where's Ryan?" Kate asked him as soon as she was close enough that she didn't have to shout to be heard. Gesturing absently towards the break room where Kevin was standing at the espresso machine, making himself a cup of coffee, Javier didn't look away from the photo he was pinning up, from the Connor Ryan crime scene, writing the man's name beneath the picture.

"Is he doing alright? I mean, did he seem very upset?"

At that question Javier capped the marker and put it down, turning to face his friends.

"No. No, he's not alright. Would you be?"

Sensing that now was a good time to intervene, before nerves and temper got the better of either of them, Kate pulled out her cell phone, stepping away. "I'm going to go notify the rest of his family, call them down for an ID." They had found numbers for a mother, father, and sister on his phone, and Kate had found it slightly offputting that in all the literally dozens of contacts that he had programmed into his mobile, not one number was his brother's.

When he next turned to look at the man, Javier spotted Rick, staring straight past him at the photo of Connor Ryan with a strange expression on his face.

"What is it?" the detective asked, folding his arms and looking at the at the moment nearly bare board.

"That face. I know him from somewhere I just can't pinpoint where."

Javier shrugged. "I mean he does sorta look freakily like Ryan."

"No, not that. It's the name too. Connor Ryan." Rick stared at the picture, forehead furrowed, for several long moments before his eyebrows shot up. "Oh my god. Connor Ryan. He's Connor Ryan."

"Yeah. We've established that." Having no idea where Rick was going with this and already being on edge, Javier didn't have any time for the writer's usual goofing off.

Except this time, Rick wasn't playing around.

"No, he's  _Connor Ryan._  Of  _the_  Ryans." When he saw that Javier still wasn't following, Rick shook his head, turning to look back at the picture again. "I mean I've only seen him once or twice at parties, but I can't believe I didn't recognize him, this guy and his family are famous."

"We're talking about the same Connor here, right? Same Connor that's my partner's brother? Cause I'm pretty sure Ryan ain't famous. I think I'd have noticed that."

"Yeah, that's the part I'm having trouble with. These people, they run a Forbes 500 company, it's an  _empire_. How could we have not known he was one of them?" Normally, this kind of a puzzle would delight and tantalize Rick. Not now, though. Not when it involved one of his friends. Javier was quiet for several moments, as Kate came back over, Rick catching her up on the dots he had connected. When she asked if he had known anything about his, Javier took a deep breath, looking over at Kevin, sitting in the break room staring at the coffee mug in his hands.

"I had no idea. I've never met any of his family members. Neither has Jenny. He doesn't talk about them. I didn't even know he had a brother."

They must not have been that far from the station, because it wasn't that long after that the three of them got their first look at the Ryans. From the moment they walked out of the elevator, Javier, Rick, and Kate knew exactly who they were.

Brady Ryan, the family patriarch, looked, much as his dead son had, eerily similar to Kevin. Except where Kevin's eyes were reminiscent of a calm, clear sky (or, as a slightly tipsy Jenny had once described them, 'the bluest blue to ever blue'), Brady's eyes were ice, cold and hard, unforgiving. He moved with a steady, even stride, shoulders back and head held high. Every inch of him radiated power, and his face looked... cruel.

Next to him walked his wife, Quinlan, CFO of their company, Ryan Global Inc., and it was from her that Kevin had presumably gotten his height. Next to Brady she seemed tiny, but no less intimidating. Something about Quinlan Ryan set Javier on edge. He had sensed Kevin snapping up from his desk to stand behind him, stiffening as his family came into view, and now he saw where he got that posture from. His mother too had a face with a cruel edge, eyes as frigid as his father's, her back straight as an arrow. However if they had looked mean, they were nothing when compared to his sister.

If Rick Castle were asked to describe a siren, the type of mythical monster that lured sailors to their deaths with deceiving looks and a hypnotizing song, Keelan Ryan was the woman he would have gone with. She was tall and beautiful, but it was a dangerous sort of beauty, her mouth set in a savage sort of grimace. As soon as she spotted the group of detectives (plus writer), her eyes locked in on Kevin, and she made straight for him. Javier looked behind him at Kevin's stricken expression and suddenly wished that he had the ability to get his best friend far away from these people, because with that kind of a look on her face, Keelan and the other two Ryans had come with anything but good intentions.

"So the wayward son finally turns up, after all this time," Keelan said, stopping in front of her brother and crossing her arms, bracelets clinking against the cufflinks clipped to her jacket sleeves. She had a good four or five inches on Kevin already, and coupled with the heels she practically towered over him. "And not dead in a ditch, like I expected to find you." Kevin flinched at her harsh, mocking words and breathed in a heavy sigh, face resigned.

"Hello, Keelan."

"Kevin. It's been a while."

The Irish detective snorted softly and nodded. "Yeah. Sure has. What, fifteen years?"

"Alright, enough," snapped Brady Ryan, stepping in. "What the hell is going on here, Kevin?"

With every passing moment, Javier disliked his partner's family more and more. From the way they were both staring in shock and disgust, Rick and Kate shared his sentiment.

"Connor's dead, dad. I thought Detective Beckett told you that."

"Well?" the large, loud man demanded, stepping into Kevin's space. "What happened?"

"We don't know yet," Kevin replied quietly. "That's what the investigation is for. Detective Beckett called you here to-"

"What do you  _mean_ , you don't  _know_. I thought that's why you went to that godawful community college to get that useless two year degree, so that you could  _solve_ things like this. Isn't that your job," Brady paused, looking at the plaque on Kevin's desk, " _Detective Ryan_?"

"I'm not even on the case."

Sensing that this wasn't going to go a good place if Brady was allowed to get even angrier, Kate stepped in.

"Mr. Ryan. I know this must be hard for you, but we did call you here to identify your son's body. If you and your wife and your daughter would please accompany myself and Mr. Castle, we can get this going," she said as politely as she could muster, given how the man had spoken to Kevin. She wanted to kick him right out of the precinct, but something told her that this course of action a) wouldn't work, if she knew people like Brady, and b) would only cause bigger problems for all of them in the long run. So instead, she grabbed Rick's arm and pulled him towards autopsy, gesturing for the Ryans to follow her. They did, Keelan shooting one last look over her shoulder at her brother.

As soon as they were out of sight Kevin deflated, dropping down into his chair and breathing deeply. Javier rounded on him, bewildered and rather metaphorically floored after the scene he had just witnessed.

"Kevin, what the  _hell_  was that? Who  _are_  those people?"

Scrubbing a hand over his face, suddenly feeling as if he hadn't slept in weeks, Kevin looked up at him. "Those people are my mother, my father, and my sister. God," he said shakily, dropping his elbows to his knees. "It's just like I remember it."

"They were  _always_  like this?" Javier must have sounded shocked, because Kevin gave a dry chuckle and shook his head.

"That, Javi, that was nothing. Par for the course with Keelan and dad. You should see them on a bad day, it's... Ffff." Air whooshed past his lips in an exhausted gust and Kevin's head fell into his hands. "Please, can we just not talk about this right now?" Seeing that he was about three inches from snapping under everything that was going on, Javier backed off. He redirected his attention back to the board, and putting together everything he could with the information at hand. Hopefully Lanie's autopsy would give them more to go off of.

As if on cue, his phone went off. It was Lanie, telling him he better get down to autopsy right away because 'this is something you should hear in person'. He turned to Kevin, apprehensive about leaving the man alone when Brady, Quinlan, and Keelan were surely not too long from coming back from the morgue. Kevin glanced his way and saw this, waving a hand absently.

"Go. Deal with the case. I'll deal with my family. I've done it before, I can handle twenty more minutes with them."

Javier gave him what he hoped was a reassuring smile and headed off. He passed the Ryans on the way, and it was only the current circumstances that prevented him from going off on them then and there about what happened to people who screwed with people he cared about.

When he reached autopsy, Lanie, Kate, and Rick were waiting for him with identical grim expressions. Apprehension seized him and he walked into the room slowly, almost not wanting to hear whatever it was Lanie had to tell him.

"We got a match to the prints from the knife in the storm drain," the coroner said, sending a look to the computer in front of her.

"Yeah? And?" With every passing second his nerves increased. "That was fast."

"I know. That's cause the prints were right here in our system, it only took a minute or two to match them up."

"Cut the crap, Lanie, whose are they?"

"The prints from the knife pinged a set from our police database, Javier. They're a match for Detective Kevin Ryan."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So remember when I was like 'wow I am really updating this fast aND I'M GONNA FINISH REBOOTING THAT SUITS AU AND POST THAT HELL YEAH'.
> 
> ...
> 
> Well you can see about how well that went.
> 
> I really don't have an excuse? Except that it just kept not happening and also holy finals batman that was not a fun experience. THE IMPORTANT PART is that I finally kicked my own ass into gear and did the thing whoop. Also this chapter is HELLA long oops.
> 
> Ever had that thing happen where you're like 'okay let's write the fic oh hi there headcanon what are you doing here. wait. wait no. i didn't give you permission to be in this fic. stop it. cease immediately. no. go away.'? Well that's sort of what happened here. I have like this massive headcanon of Javier as aromantic (for those of you who don't know, there's a lovely FAQ on aromanticaardvark.tumblr.com/FAQ, run and check that out, you'll find yourself a more educated person for having done it). 
> 
> And so it would seem that in context of this fic, Javier is aro. I do not have a problem with this in the slightest, and I'm sorry if you do. (not really. aro!javi fics for the win)
> 
> Behold the Ryan family being a bunch of Truly Terrible PeopleTM and I hope you enjoy this chapter in which I am a horrible person, there is a bunch of unrealistic police work, and Javier and Jenny are friends because why the hell not.
> 
> Please do leave me a review! They make me feel very happy and also go a long way to guilting me into updating the damn thing haha oops.
> 
> (remember to come say hi to me on tumblr, i'm frostlawyer! talk castle and fics with me! this author's note is so long i am so sorry)

>  
> 
> god grew lonely
> 
> in the days before light
> 
> so he made himself  **an heir**
> 
> **and in the same breath**
> 
> invented  **regret**.

> \- tumblr user screwballdame

It was like he had stepped into some messed up, backwards parallel universe.

"No, that can't be right," Javier said vehemently, shaking his head. "It has to be some kind of mistake. His prints can't be on the weapon."

"Yet here they are," Lanie replied, sounding as unhappy with the situation as he did.

"Kevin  _didn't_  kill him."

"And nobody's saying he did," interrupted Kate in a placating voice. "We just need to talk to him. Figure out a reason why his prints were on that knife. I'm sure there's some sort of explanation that doesn't involve him killing his brother. There was a second set of prints on the knife as well, we're running those now."

While they waited, Lanie led the three of them over to the body on her table, ready to deliver the information she couldn't tell them while Brady, Quinlan, and Keelan had been standing right there. It was just as she had predicted at the scene: the two stab wounds wouldn't have necessarily been fatal if he had reached a hospital and gotten treatment fast enough. The gunshot wound to his chest had ended any chance of that, though, and he was dead almost instantly. Kind of odd, to both stab and shoot someone. It spoke to an impatient killer, one who had planned on using the knife and then found it to be too time consuming, foregoing it for the noisier method of shooting him. Estimated time of death was somewhere between eight and eleven the evening before the body was found. Construction going on very near the alley could easily have masked gunshots, and since it wasn't a residential area and they were on a rush to finish the job the work had gone on until midnight.

Lanie had just finished going over her preliminary report (she would know more once she had time to actually perform the autopsy) when the computer made a noise, telling her there was a match for their second set of fingerprints. Her expression foreshadowed anything but good news when she looked at the screen.

"What?" asked Javier, alarm heightening. "Who is it, Lanie?"

"It's... Uh," she hedged, looking more confused than anything. "Jenny."

" _Jenny_?" Rick sounded like he didn't believe her. Judging from their expressions, Javier and Kate didn't believe her either. She grabbed the screen and turned it towards the others. On it was displayed Jenny Ryan's smiling face, with her prints shown beside it.

A couple of weeks previously, Kevin had brought Jenny into the station to give her a sort of tour. She had hung out for a bit at his desk, and then they walked around with Javier, introducing her to the officers. They had shown her around, and finally scanned her fingerprints to show her how it worked. Jenny had been delighted. Working as a pediatric nurse North Mercy General Hospital, she had never had a chance to get an inside look at a police station before. And now, as a byproduct of that, her prints were in their system.

Apparently, they were also on one of their weapons.

"So wait, you're saying that both Kevin and Jenny handled this knife? And then it was used in his brother's murder?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying," Lanie said, then sighed. She didn't like what this was doing to anyone involved. As far as she was concerned, life had been fine right up until Connor Ryan had crossed her table, and then it had all gone to shit. Her most recent breakup with Javier (and last breakup, due to a talk they'd had regarding the topic of the complicated world of him and dating, specifically the fact that he didn't particularly feel like it was something he needed or wanted to do, but that was a train of thought for another time) had ended amicably, and things around the station were running swimmingly. Kevin and Jenny were having a baby, Rick and Kate were engaged, and Javier (since stopping trying to make himself date) had been the happiest he'd been since she'd known him. She wasn't doing too bad herself, if the nice (and attractive) evidence clerk she was seeing was any indication.

The point was, for once in their lives, everything was going the way it should be. And then Connor Ryan had been murdered, and everything had been tossed on it's head, with a close friend right in the middle of it all. As she watched Javier, Kate, and Rick walk back out towards where they would have to break the news to Kevin, Lanie shook her head, glancing down at Connor. No, it hadn't started with him. Whatever was happening here had begun a week ago, with a mysterious lunch.

"What did you do to him?" she asked the dead man absently. She didn't expect a response.

 

 

…

When they reached the room in which the Ryans and a significantly harassed looking Kevin were waiting for them, Kate paused outside and turned to the other two, a serious expression on her face.

"Look, when we tell Ryan about this, I don't think it's a good idea to do it near them."

"Oh definitely," Rick agreed immediately. "We're not trying to get him killed here." He coughed, abashed, when he noticed the 'do you really think now is the time' look Javier was directing at him. "Sorry. Anyway, it's a good idea. We send them home and talk to him alone."

"I mean it also just might be a good idea to get them away from him for his sake," Javier said with no small amount of distrust aimed towards his partner's family. "I know Ryan. Just look at him, that's not the Ryan I know. This isn't good for him. Whatever went down here, it was bad."

With that in mind, they headed towards what remained of the Ryan family. There had been truth in Javier's words. It was evident in the way Kevin stood, listening to whatever his father was borderline shouting at him. The posture that had been drummed into him since he could walk was perfectly intact, shoulders back and spine straight, but everything else about the way he stood there screamed unease and a desire to flee. The sooner they intervened here, the better.

"...and if you think that  _excuses_  what you-"

"Pardon me," Javier said in a tone that was as icy as the furious man's eyes. He stepped around Brady, noting his aggressive, intimidating stance, and made a point of casually positioning himself so that Kevin was shielded behind his shoulder. "There's nothing else we can tell you at this point. I think it would be best for all of us if you and your family just left."

At that point Brady's anger was redirected from his surviving son to Javier, who stared right back at him, daring him to make some sort of challenge. Whatever was up with Kevin which was apparently preventing him from being able to stand up for himself, Javier didn't have the same problem. Brady could try and push him around all he wanted, but there was no ancient family history hanging over them, no childhood forcing his eyes to the floor and his mouth to stay tight shut.

"I won't be going anywhere, Mr..."

"Esposito. And it's  _Detective_. I'm Detective Javier Esposito, your son's partner."

"My son is  _dead_ , Detective," Brady spat, squaring his shoulders and emphasizing the several inches he had on Javier. "And until you find out who murdered him, I am not going anywhere."

Sending a look from Kevin, still standing silent and stiff behind him, to Kate and Rick, hanging back by the door and letting him handle the situation, Javier shook his head shortly. "No I  _really_  think you should leave."

"I have a right to know what happened to him."

Before it could escalate any further, Rick stepped in. "Look, Mr. Ryan, I know this must be a very difficult time for you. But you've been here for a while, there's nothing more we can tell you at this time, and I'm sure your wife and daughter don't want to be standing around in a police station right now. Let's go down to this little coffee shop nearby, I know the people who run it. Give you folks a break and give the detectives time to work."

From the look he sent them once Brady, Quinlan, and Keelan were leaving the room, Javier, Kate, and Kevin could tell that he was just playing nice with them, the act covering up the fact that he was as disgusted with these people as the others were. As soon as the door closed behind him, Kate and Javier turned to face Kevin. The man's blue eyes were downcast and his hands, clenched into fists, displayed the occasional tremor.

"I  _hate_  this," Kevin burst out after a few seconds, knocking a chair across the room. He was breathing hard, face flushed. "I  _hate_  every single  _one_  of them." Neither of them had ever seen him this upset before.

Kevin Ryan was a quiet, gentle sort of person. He liked to play video games with his best friend, and watch movies, and have long talks with his wife. And he never,  _ever_ held a grudge. Getting in a fight with Kevin was like getting in a fight with a golden retriever. He'd be mad at you for roughly three minutes and then an hour later would have to be reminded that an argument had even taken place.

Now here he was, faced with something he thought he had gotten away from for good, and he was  _angry_. At Connor (however irrationally) for being killed, at whoever had killed him for starting the whole ball rolling, at his family for suddenly showing up in his life after fifteen years... at himself, for freezing in the face of Brady's fury.

"God  _damn it_." His voice was muffled, having sat down and dropped his head into his hands. This whole thing was spinning wildly out of control. "Why is this  _happening_..."

Javier exchanged a worried look with Kate, then walked over to where Kevin was sitting cautiously, almost positive what he was about to ask would make the situation worse, but finding the question unavoidable. He leaned back, bracing his hands against the table behind him, considering how best to approach this.

"Hey, you doin alright?" The tired look he got from Kevin was enough of an answer. "Right. Anyway, bro, I really hate to have to ask this, but where were you yesterday, between eight and eleven?"

Kevin's head jerked up and he looked at Javier, shocked. "Me? Javi, you think  _I_  did this?"

"Of course I don't," Javier backpedaled. "But Kevin, we... We found your prints on the knife." Kate put the evidence bag she had brought up from autopsy (kept carefully out of sight of the Ryans) on the table.

"Lanie ran the prints from the knife," she said. "We found yours, and Jenny's. Nobody here actually thinks you would kill someone, okay?" Kate waited for him to look at her before going on, wanting him to see the sincerity in her face. "We don't think you did it. We just need to ask, because when we do find the real killer, that is the first thing the defense attorney is gonna go for. Why were your prints on the knife?"

After a few moments of silence, looking from Kate to Javier and then back down at his own hands, Kevin spoke in a weary voice. "There's, uh, there's a knife missing from our kitchen set. Jenny's aunt got it for us for a wedding present. I don't know what happened to it. Could be that one. And, I... I don't have an alibi."

Taken aback, Javier frowned at him. "What?"

"I was out. On a bridge by the river. I go there to think sometimes. I must've been there for... God, for hours. Nobody was with me. Nobody saw me there. I can't prove it."

"Okay," Javier said slowly. "Here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna sit tight here for a bit, while we try and narrow down some real suspects. Okay?" Kevin didn't answer, gaze once again downcast, only looking up when his best friend tapped his shoulder. "Okay?"

"Yeah," he huffed out, shaking his head and standing up. "Yeah, okay."

 

 

…

"I'm sorry, I'm not following," Jenny said slowly, sitting down on her couch, looking at Javier in utter confusion. "My husband's brother, a brother I didn't even know  _existed_ , has been murdered, and you think  _he_  did it?" As soon as he could, Javier had left to let her know what was going on, and to check about her prints, on the knife as well as Kevin's.

"Not for a second, Jenny. You know him. I know him." Javier sat down next to her. "We're going to sort this out at the station, and prove it wasn't Kevin. He's gonna be fine."

The blonde woman sighed and shook her head, aware of the implication behind 'he's gonna be fine'. It meant that right now he wasn't.

"Look, Jenny, I..." Javier trailed off, uncomfortable with the way he had to take this conversation. "The knife set. Can I see it?"

"Right, yeah, of course." She stood slowly, one hand on her stomach. They walked into the kitchen together and Jenny pulled out the knife block and showed it to him. "I didn't really worry about the missing one... I thought one of us must have misplaced it, hell I thought  _you_  could have misplaced it, in one of you and Kev's misguided attempts to help me make dinner."

"I really hate to have to ask this, but where were you yesterday? Between about eight and eleven? I'm so sorry but I've gotta ask."

Jenny smiled at him faintly. "I understand. I was here, off work, watching Grey's Anatomy on Netflix. The servers log that stuff, I think? Our account or something? And I called tech support a couple of times." She was silent for a little while before turning to him with a troubled expression. "What are they like? His family."

The man looked at her evenly for a moment before walking back into the living room and dropping onto the couch. Jenny followed him, apprehension rising in her chest.

"I think I get now why nobody's ever met them."

"That bad?" she asked, worry increasing when Javier nodded.

"Worse. The moment they walk in the door the daughter – that's Kev's sister – just tears into him. Said something about him finally turning up, and being surprised he wasn't dead in a ditch somewhere. And his dad... I about hauled off and decked the guy. I definitely wanted to. Couldn't go two minutes without yelling, mostly at Kevin. I got the feeling that the farther away from Kevin we could get him, the better."

"And his mother?" Jenny felt ill. She'd known it wasn't going to be good, considering that none of the Ryans had even been at their  _wedding_ , but from the way Javier talked about them, her husband's family was worse than she had anticipated. Suddenly, all she wanted was to be at the station with Kevin.

"She didn't really talk much, but she didn't seem upset by how her husband and daughter talked to her son, so. I don't know."

As Javier stood, readying himself to leave and head back to the 12th, Jenny stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"I'm coming with you," she said firmly, leaving no room for argument. "From what you said, it sounds like Kevin needs everyone he can get in his corner right now. And I'm not about to sit home watching Netflix while he's there dealing with this. Alright?" Again, there was no room for any answer but the one he gave. Javier handed her his coat, once again sending a mental thanks to whatever higher power might be listening that his partner had met Jenny. She had become a dear friend in recent years, and knowing Kevin had someone like that around was great. The two of them deserved each other.

"Let's see if we can get there before they get back from coffee."

 

 

…

At the station, Kate Beckett was working on setting up the board that Javier had started. She had their timeline – or what they knew of it so far – mapped out, and what details of Connor Ryan's life she had managed to glean from reading news reports on him.

Connor was set up to inherit the Ryan family empire upon the retirement or death of his parents. The company, Ryan Global Inc., was a very well known, influential, wealthy mobile phone software company. She didn't really understand the business side of it, but it looked like he stood to gain a lot by taking over the company. He was young, good looking, and rich. It seemed like he had everything going for him. The only thing that really stood out was a few small articles on public squabbles he'd had with his fiancee, a woman named Riley Macke, an heiress.

Macke's photo went up on the board immediately after Kate found and printed it. A fiancee Connor had been fighting with made a much better explanation than Kevin, who apparently hadn't even seen his family in fifteen years. At least it did to her. Whatever had happened with Kevin and his family, there wasn't a thing aside from irrefutable hard proof that could convince her he was a killer. She had just finished writing and was capping the dry erase marker when Captain Gates walked over.

"How's the case coming?" the woman asked, shooting a look over at Kevin, pacing in the break room.

"Sir we... We found something you should probably know about," Kate said as Rick rejoined her.

"I left the Ryans at the coffee shop, they'll be here in a bit," he muttered to her under his breath before straightening and standing at her side, both of them facing Gates.

"Well? What did you find?"

"Um, Detective Ryan's fingerprints. They're on the knife that was used to stab Connor Ryan." Kate kept a close eye on Gates's face, waiting for a reaction. "Turns out there's one just like it missing from a set at his house."

"And do you think he did it?"

They'd been ready for the question, and yet both jumped on the defensive as soon as it came.

"No. No! Of course not."

"This is Kevin Ryan we're talking about here do you really think he could kill someone in cold blood?"

"Sir he's-"

"Enough, you two," interrupted Gates. "I'm not saying arrest the man. I'm not saying he did it. What I am saying is  _prove_  he didn't do it. Keep me updated." As she walked away, Kate and Rick exchanged a look.

"Rick, he doesn't have an alibi."

"I know. But we'll figure it all out. We have to."

Jenny and Javier made it back a few minutes before Brady, Quinlan, and Keelan did. Before she headed to the break room to be with Kevin, Jenny turned to Javier.

"Whatever you have to do, Javi. Just prove he didn't do this."

"I'm gonna. Don't worry about that. I'll take care of the case. You take care of Kevin."

Javier nodded and as she walked away his attention was diverted by the entrance of Brady, Quinlan, and Keelan Ryan. He sighed, a knot of anger already tightening in him. Kate touched his arm to get his attention.

"Why don't you interview Keelan. I don't think it's a good idea to put you in a room with Brady Ryan."

He had to agree with her on that one. Brady and Quinlan were escorted to an interview room by Kate and Rick before either of them had time to spot Kevin and Jenny. Javier turned to the woman left, standing there with her arms folded and the hint of a smirk on her face.

"So, cop boy, are we gonna do this interview thing or what?"

"Right this way."

He got the feeling that this wasn't going to go well at all.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I updated late. Whoops. Sorry guys. Anyway, here's your new chapter. It's probably not realistic that they'd put up with this BS for as long as they did, but they needed any information they could get for a lead, and it's to show exactly what sort of people Brady, Quinlan, and Keelan are. I'll give you a hint: not the good kind.
> 
> Anyway, please do drop me a line if you have any thoughts! You should also come pester me over at tumblr, I'm frostlawyer.tumblr.com. Bug me for faster updates! It's a pretty lucrative strategy tbh.
> 
> Enjoy the new chapter!

>  god grew lonely
> 
> in the days before light
> 
>  
> 
> so he made himself  **an heir**
> 
>  
> 
> **and in the same breath**
> 
> invented  **regret**.
> 
>  
> 
> \- tumblr user screwballdame

The door opened and closed softly, Jenny releasing Kevin from her embrace and turning to face Victoria Gates with her arm around her husband's waist.

“Captain Gates, what is going on here?” she asked, completely thrown by the day's events thus far. If she had thought Kevin was behaving strangely in the previous week that was nothing compared to how he seemed now.

“Don't worry about anything,” Victoria replied, trying to sound as reassuring as she could. “We're going to have this whole mess sorted out before you know it.” She then turned to Kevin, her expression taking on a sympathetic tone. “Your family is being interviewed by Detectives Beckett, Esposito, and Mr. Castle, Ryan.”

Kevin snorted, shaking his head. “That's just... _perfect_. That's perfect. Exactly what I need, them alone in a room with my family.” He looked hesitantly over at his boss, reluctance in his voice. “Do you... Am I being investigated for this?”

“Nobody in this building believes you have done anything wrong.” She sounded completely assured of the truth in her words. “Just due process. I'm sure Esposito will keep you updated.”

Finding that there wasn't really all that much she could say to either of them, Gates left, sending a concerned look back to the break room where she could see Jenny and Kevin quietly talking. She had never seen anything like this in her precinct before. People storming in and yelling all sorts of horrid things at her detectives... It certainly wasn't the first time one of her people had lost a family member, not even the first time one had been murdered in their jurisdiction. This was the first time, though, that the other members of that family had then shown up and began berating one of them.

As Brady Ryan had been tearing into Kevin, one of the officers had come to get her in her office. Marie Valdez burst in, confusion and worry on her face, and announced that she wasn't sure what was going on, but it sounded like Detective Ryan was being attacked by someone in one of the interview rooms, and she had heard from Alsley who'd heard from Jacobs who'd overheard Beckett talking to Castle that it was Ryan's father doing the attacking. Gates had, of course, immediately run out of her office wondering why the hell, if Ryan was being attacked, wasn't Esposito, Beckett, or Castle doing anything about it. And for that matter, why wasn't _anyone_ doing anything about it. There were at least four or five cops just milling about, looking awkwardly at one another and the interview room, doing absolutely nothing about the situation.

Victoria walked towards the interview room, ready to put herself in between an attacker and one of her people if need be. Ryan could handle himself just fine under normal circumstances, but she wasn't blind, and if the situation had been going on this long and hadn't stopped yet, he might need a hand.

“What are you people just standing around here for?” she demanded, reaching for the door knob. The officers didn't respond, just gave each other uneasy looks. She shook her head, exasperated. Just as she was about to open the door, Victoria was stopped dead in her tracks, by Ryan himself. He saw her standing there and his eyes widened in panic. He shook his head almost imperceptibly, and though while the gesture may have been small the urgency in it was obvious.

Victoria withdrew her hand, giving Ryan a questioning look. He gave a tiny shrug, one that apparently caught the attention of whoever was yelling at him, as he cringed sharply and looked quickly away from her, the angry sounding man's voice increasing abruptly in volume.

The Captain shook her head, decidedly not comfortable with this whole situation. She didn't like not being able to put a stop to this, but for all that she was a hardass, Victoria Gates was passionately loyal and fiercely protective of those she deemed her own, and her respect for Ryan, his privacy, and his ability to handle his own matters warred with her desire to keep one of her people safe. Victoria sighed and caught Ryan's eyes once more, exchanging a look with him.

The man looked flat out exhausted, strained near to the breaking point. She hoped to god that this case would be over quick, and these people would get out of her precinct for good, before they could do any damage.

Or, well... Any _more_ damage.

…

The silence was growing awkward. Rick and Kate stood together by a table, facing Brady and Quinlan Ryan. So far Kate didn't think anyone had heard Quinlan say a word. Brady seemed to be the talker of the two of them, and the topic he'd latched on to was Kevin. The longer his tirade went on, the more Rick and Kate hated him. After a particularly nasty comment, at which Kate decided that she was pretty sure they'd have a new homicide on their hands had Javier been in the room, enough was enough.

“Mr. Ryan,” Kate interrupted, her nails digging into her palms as she tried to restrain herself. “Mr Ryan please take a seat.”

Brady gave her a bored look. “Defensive, huh? He's got all three of you fooled into thinking he's worth it. Always was good at running a con, that little bastard. I'll give you a little hint here, Detective... What was it?”

“Detective Beckett,” she said through gritted teeth. “And I'm going to have to ask you not to speak about-”

“Detective Beckett, he's not worth it. Put your loyalty in somebody who won't screw you over first chance he gets. Tell that loud angry one, Esposito, to waste his time protecting somebody who'll return the favor.” In any other situation, Rick would have appreciated the irony of Brady calling Javier loud and angry.

“Mr. Ryan,” Kate tried to derail the conversation for the second time, wishing for perhaps the umpteenth time that they could just drop kick Brady out of both the building and their lives. But they did need to talk to him, just this once, in order to gather as much information as possible. If he stormed out now, taking Quinlan and Keelan with him, they would be back where they started with information on their dead boy.

“What do you want?” Brady drawled in a dull tone.

“Your son, Connor,” Rick said. He too was seething but his mother was an actress and he'd learnt through being famous and through ages of parent teacher conferences how to act around people he didn't like. “We need you two to tell us everything you can about him, especially if there was something you think might've possibly led to his death. Anything you can tell us, then we can get you folks out of here and on your way.”

Quinlan Ryan let out a sniff that she quickly stifled behind one small hand, her shoulders hitching softly. Her husband shot Rick and Kate a vicious glare, wrapping an arm around her.

“Connor was perfect,” the distraught woman whimpered, staring off out the window. “He was everything a son should be, nothing like that... He was _perfect_. Model behavior, always smiled for the press, always said just the right thing. Everything was going exactly to the plan. But now, now that's all over. I don't know what we'll ever possibly do without him. My little boy is gone, my baby is gone...”

Two conflicting views fought inside Rick. The father in him felt sorry for the woman. The pseudo-cop in him, however, wasn't so sure her gratuitous display of grief was anything more than exactly that – a display. Something about Quinlan's wailing was a little too forced, a little too fake. He didn't have any doubt she was upset, sure, what mother wouldn't be upon finding out her twenty five year old son was dead, but she was perhaps overselling it just a tad. It was too much a sharp change from the woman who had impassively looked at the face of a corpse and said 'yes, that's him'. A woman who had strode into a police station with eyes of ice and a face of stone, hadn't said one word to a child she hadn't seen in fifteen years. One look at Kate told Rick she was on the same page.

“Mr. Ryan?” she said, directing the focus of the conversation to Brady.

“What's there to say? My son was a good man, and now he's gone. I can't think of anybody who'd have wanted to hurt him. He did right by everyone. _Kevin_ could have done with...” Brady trailed off, frowning.

“What is it? Have you remembered something?” Kate was glad to take the conversation in any direction that led away from more of what Brady had to say about her friend.

“Kevin.”

So much for that.

“We're not here to talk about Kevin. He isn't the topic of this conversation.”

“You asked me about my son and I'm telling you. He and Kevin never got along. That _boy_ ,” Brady spat venomously, “was always jealous of him. When Connor arrived, Kevin was already a problem. Eight years old and he started rebelling, fighting us, causing trouble. Not Connor though. We told you, Detective. Connor was a model son. Did everything he was supposed to. Never put a toe out of line.”

Rick placed a hand on Kate's arm to still her movement. They were both thinking the same thing, which went something along the lines of 'how could people like this possibly have raised a man that turned out like that'. The image of the Kevin they knew simply wasn't reconcilable with the pair sitting before them.

“Do you...” Kate swallowed and took a breath. The words tasted like tar in her mouth. “Do you have any reason to believe Kevin had motivation to kill Connor?” She carefully avoided the shocked look Rick gave her upon hearing the question. It wasn't like she _wanted_ to ask it, she loved Kevin just like Rick and Javier did, and she trusted him. Nowhere in her, not for one second, did Kate believe that he'd purposefully hurt someone. But she was a cop, a detective, and these were the questions she had to ask.

Quinlan and Brady seemed to mull over the question for a moment before Brady looked up.

“The company.”

“What?” That didn't make any sense.

“Our company, detective, do keep up,” sneered Brady, tone patronizing. “Connor, he was first in line to inherit everything. Keelan has her life squared away, she's inconsequential, but Connor. We set him up in every way we could. From the moment we knew Kevin was a mistake, a screw up, the focus went to Connor. Wouldn't you resent someone for that, Miss Beckett? If you had a chance like that, the opportunity to be rich and powerful, the head of an empire, and you were so much of a fuck up that you lost that to someone? You'd hate them, wouldn't you. Kevin's life could have been worth something, he could have been _worth_ something, but Connor got everything he should've had instead. Sounds like motive to me.”

Kate couldn't sit there and listen to Brady talk about Kevin like that any longer. “Mr. Ryan, I understand that this is a hard time for you and your wife, but if you continue to speak about a New York police officer in this fashion I'm going to have to ask you to leave. And if you won't leave, I will make you. Your son has helped a lot of people, done a lot of good, and I can assure you he is worth just as much as a cop as he would've been as a CEO.” It was hard to keep the venom from her tone, the fury from her voice, and some of it assuredly slipped out. She wasn't really trying that hard to disguise it by this point, though.

“We've been over this. I have one son, and he is dead. And frankly, I don't think there is anything else I can possibly tell you that would help. My wife, my daughter, and I are going home.” Brady stood, pulling a blank faced, markedly calm, impassive Quinlan with him. “Call us when you've stopped defending Kevin and arrested him for murder.”

….

The clock ticked on the wall. Javier sat in a chair facing Kevin's sister. Keelan Ryan stared at him with one eyebrow quirked up, as if to say 'well? I'm waiting'. It was an expression that he had seen many times before, when he was taking a while to get to the point of a sentence. It was unnerving, seeing a look so common from Kevin, a look distorted from one of fond exasperation to mocking expectation, on this cold woman's marble features. She looked like her mother.

She looked like Kevin.

Javier shifted and swallowed, wondering if Kate and Rick, interviewing the other two in the next room over, felt this weird. It felt like he was going behind his partner's back, interfering against his wishes in a past he'd kept hidden for a reason. Keelan tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair, tilting her head to the side in a way so like Kevin that Javier had to shake himself a bit to dispel the uneasy deja vu that had settled over him.

“Did you bring me in here so you could ask me questions about Connie or was it just to stare at me?” she asked lazily.

“Tell me about Connor.” Javier's words were short and clipped. It was taking every ounce of restraint he had not to escort her off the premises immediately.

“Perfect.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, you said to tell you about Connor. And that's all anybody ever had to say about him. My parents, people at the company, people my parents buttered up. Perfect perfect perfect. Connie in a word. He smiled big for the camera, that gorgeous fiancée of his hanging off his arm. Pretty boy with a pretty grin. Looked good in a suit. Most importantly though, he was the good son they always wanted. I mean I was a girl, so I was no good. Can't have a woman heading a company like Ryan Global. Then there was Kevin, and, well, he was the opposite of what a Ryan man should be. Disappointment to us all, is what dad says. So he was out. And then they had Connor, and suddenly their first two misses were disregarded because they had a hit. He was so good at everything he ever did...”

One thing had stuck out from Keelan's little speech about her brother, one bit of information that might provide the answer they were looking for.

“You said he had a fiancée?”

“Oh yeah,” Keelan said, staring dismissively down at her french manicured fingernails. The tips were, instead of white, a very light, icy blue, much like her eyes. “Riley. Riley Macke. Tell you the one thing he could never get right, though. Boy couldn't keep his fly zipped.”

“He was cheating on her?” asked Javier, hopes rising that this might finally be the break they needed, the turn that would prove Kevin had nothing to do with this.

The woman snorted. “I couldn't name one girl he was ever with that he didn't cheat on. It was like he couldn't help it. Faithfulness just wasn't his style or whatever.”

“Do you happen to know who it was he was seeing on the side, and where we could find her?”

“Probably a secretary at the company. It's always a secretary. See, they can't say anything or their lives are ruined. You just don't disgrace a Ryan.” Keelan stopped, smirking. “Well. Except for Kevin, and it seems he's managed to do that all on his own.” She leant one arm on the arm of her chair, propping her chin on it, expression one of fascination. “So, speaking of, you two are close, huh? Saw how you stepped in when dad was at his old game again. Partners. I'd bet you're just the best of friends, right?”

“Where can I find Miss Macke?” By this point Javier was past disguising the disgust in his voice.

“Bet you don't know everything, though. Bet he never told you about us. About what happened.”

“You can either tell me where I can find Connor's fiancée right now or you can get the hell out of my precinct. I don't know what the hell kind of game you think you're playing, but I am trying my best, despite you and your family doing everything you can to hurt my partner, to solve your brother's murder. Tell me what I need to know or get out of the damn building.”

“Touchy touchy,” Keelan snickered, tracing a finger around in circles on the chair arm. “A hot head. I like it. As for Riley, you can probably find the airhead where you usually can. Country club.”

As Javier made to speak again, Keelan raised her hands in an 'I surrender' gesture.

“Relax, cop boy. There's my cue.” Right on time, Brady wrenched open the door, barking 'Keelan we're leaving' before slamming it shut. Keelan got up to follow him, waggling her fingers in a faux goodbye wave. Before she left, though, she stopped at the doorway, turning around with a hint of a smile on her face.

“You're wasting your time with Riley and his side dish, detective. If my brother was murdered, there's no question. It was Kevin that did it.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm horrible at updating. I'm working on it. Eh. 
> 
> Poke me on tumblr, make me update faster! Or leave me a review. Review box down at the bottom of the page, you can find me on tumblr at frostlawyer.tumblr.com. See you there!

 

 

 

>  god grew lonely
> 
> in the days before light
> 
>  
> 
> so he made himself  **an heir**
> 
>  
> 
> **and in the same breath**
> 
> invented  **regret**.
> 
>  
> 
> \- tumblr user screwballdame

Chapter Five

Kate, Rick, and Javier met back out by their desks, looking from Kevin and Jenny in the break room to each other in stunned silence. Nobody was sure what to say after that. Javier broke the silence first.

“What the _hell_ was that?” he demanded, the question hanging rhetorical and incredulous in the air above the desk between he, Kate, and Rick. Rick shrugged helplessly and Kate shook her head, anger burning bright in her eyes. “Why didn't he ever tell us?”

“Tell us what?” Rick responded with a snort of distain. “'Good job on the case guys, by the way my entire family is made of sadistic assholes who like to play mind games. How's the weather?' That's likely.”

“Castle.” The tone in Kate's voice was a warning. Turning to Javier, she shook her head again. “A family like that isn't something you go around advertising. He had every reason to keep it secret. Wouldn't you have?”

“Still, I just- I. I wish he'd said something to me, or to Jenny, or to _anyone_ , any way we could have been a little more _prepared_ for this. The way his sister was in that interview, man, it felt like she was playin' me the whole time. Tried to use Kevin against me, use the fact that we're friends to unsettle me by tearin' him apart, saying all sorts of shit about what a disappointment he was, that kinda stuff.”

“His parents weren't any better,” said Kate, shuddering at the thought of her conversation with Brady and Quinlan Ryan. “If I had to stay in a room with that man for _one more minute_...”

“We need to keep them away from Kevin.” Kate and Rick nodded along, agreeing with Javier's vehement statement.

“Right. We'll keep investigating Connor's death, but from here on out we keep the rest of the Ryans out of the precinct and away from Kevin whenever at all possible.” She looked to the other two for support, and found nothing but agreement in their faces. “Alright. That's settled. Where do we go from here?”

“Did either of you two get anything useful out of his parents?”

“Aside from a bunch of truly vile commentary on our friend over there? Not much,” snorted Rick. “He was the model child, perfect heir, yadda yadda yadda. The usual. They can't possibly imagine why someone would've wanted to hurt him. Well. Aside from Ryan.” Rick stopped for a second, mentally tallying how many Ryans they were currently dealing with. “Our Ryan, I mean. Kevin Ryan. That one.”

Kate rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Brady spouted a bunch of stuff about how Connor had ended up with the life Kevin was supposed to have, how Kevin must have hated him for that. I don't put any stock in it. What about you, anything useable from the sister?”

Sighing, Javier shot a contemptuous look at the room in which he had spent an uncomfortable, infuriating several minutes with Keelan. “Same thing as your two, cept she didn't sound like she meant it. I don't think she liked Connor very much, from the way she talked about him. Kept insisting it was Kevin that'd killed him. I didn't put much stock in that, but I did get something else. Apparently, Connor had a fiancée. And she wasn't the only one he was with, either. He was cheating on her with some secretary at the company he's set up to inherit, Ryan Global.”

“Good!” said Kate, heading straight for her desk chair and booting up her computer. “That's good, that's something we can use. Did you get a name?”

“Riley. Riley Macke.”

“Keelan say where we can find her?”

“She said something about a country club. Can't be too many Riley Mackes around. It shouldn't be too hard to track her down.”

“Perfect.” Kate's fingers stilled over her computer keyboard. She looked over at the break room. Javier and Rick followed her gaze to where it rested on Kevin and Jenny.

They couldn't see their friend's face. His head was in his hands, motionless. He looked like an absolute mess. Not that Kate could blame him for that. However where Kevin looked torn down and devoid of life, Jenny was animated and full of fire. Her eyes blazed brightly and she sat beside her husband, hand moving slowly across his shoulders. It was the angriest any of them had ever seen her look, her furious expression suggesting she was about to murder someone.

Honestly, if she had, Kate would have stood right there and alibied her for it. It was that kind of a day.

Closing her eyes and scrubbing a hand down her face, Kate turned to Javier.

“Look, while me and Castle are digging up the fiancée's location and compiling a list of Ryan Global's secretaries I want you to talk to Kevin. Check on how he's holding up, see if he'll tell you what happened fifteen years ago. Maybe understanding what went down between him and them could help us understand this case better.”

He nodded, looking back over his shoulder at his partner. “I'll see if I can find out.”

“Hey,” said Kate abruptly, catching Javier's arm as he turned to leave. “Make sure he knows we're here for him if he needs us, alright?”

Javier nodded, holding her gaze. “I will.”

…

The door closed softly behind Javier. Kevin looked up slowly, eyes dull and body language defeated. Jenny didn't look defeated. If anything she looked the opposite, brimming with barely contained rage.

“Javi nobody will tell us what's happening,” Jenny said urgently, standing up, her hands on Kevin's slumped shoulders. “All your Captain would tell us was that you were interviewing Kevin's family.”

Upon hearing those words she felt her husband's body tense under her hands. Noticing that, Javier let a heavy breath blow through his lips and pulled a chair over, sitting down on it backwards. Jenny followed suit, sitting back down beside Kevin.

“We weren't able to get much from your parents and sister, Kev. We do have one suspect though, probably two. I'm sorry, but I can't tell you any more. I wish I could, but-”

“Politics. I get it.” Kevin snorted. He shook his head, fingers tapping against the couch in a rapid, repetitive tapping movement, something he did when he got excited or distressed or sometimes just at random. “Two suspects, huh? Is one of them me?”

“Kevin, I-”

“That's what they told you, isn't it? That it was me. I bet they were just _delighted_ to tell you exactly what a screw up I was, right? What a _disgrace_ to the _family name_. Screw up, disgrace, mistake, take your pick, they probably said it all, right? God, I thought I was _done_.”

“Done with what, hon?” asked Jenny, shooting an alarmed look at Javier. “Kevin, what happened here?”

Turning from his wife to his best friend and back again, Kevin pushed himself to his feet. His hands twisted together in front of him, rubbing his knuckles red. He paced for a moment before stopped at the counter next to the espresso machine. Hands still twisting and gripping each other, Kevin leaned back against the counter, staring at the floor.

“Guess I should probably tell you, right?” His short, sharp laugh was empty. Humorless. “It's gonna get out eventually. Might as well make sure you hear it from my side rather than... Rather than theirs.”

Jenny and Javier stayed quiet, focused on the distressed man in front of them, about to spill out the story of a life he had kept a deep buried secret for fifteen years.

“It wasn't...” Kevin took a deep breath, knuckles white as his hands tightened around each other. “Growing up in that house was not... It wasn't _easy_. It was okay in the beginning. They weren't ever the kind of people who tucked you in, kissed you goodnight, wrote you notes for your lunchbox at school, but it wasn't like they were cruel. Just distant. They'd always wanted a boy, you know, to carry on the family name? That was supposed to be me. I was supposed to be their heir.”

The longer he spoke the more he seemed to shrink, hands pulled tight against his stomach, spine curved and head bowed. Neither of the others breathed a word, waiting for him to continue at his own pace. It was clear to them that this was hard for him to say, the whole thing dragging up memories and emotions he had long since locked away.

“My parents worked a lot. Like, obsessively. They were busy all the time, and Keelan had sports and clubs after school, so I always stayed with my Aunt Fiona and her girlfriend Kiara. Course at the time nobody knew they were together. Anyway, that was where it started, I guess. Fiona was a cop, Kiara worked in a crime lab. Forensics and stuff. She was brilliant. They were the reason I decided to become a cop, actually. They taught me that the way my parents did things, getting their way by bullying and intimidating and breaking the law, was wrong. That there were other ways. Man I must have spent, what, six years? Six or seven years spending every afternoon over at their house.” He stopped, eyes distant and wet.

“They disowned Fiona when she and Kiara got married. Really... _old-fashioned_ , my family. I tried to find them. Never could. They moved away and I haven't seen either of them since I was thirteen. Keelan had just left for college at NYU and Connor was five. It'd been going downhill for a while. Dad yelled and swore, mom wheedled and manipulated...

“It just kept getting worse. I wasn't what they wanted, and they couldn't change me into what I was supposed to be. Everything I did wrong, my little brother did right. They didn't need me anymore, they had Connor.”

Javier couldn't help himself. “Need you? Kevin you're their _kid_ , not...”

Shaking his head, Kevin spared him a quick glance before his eyes snapped back to the fascinating carpet. “My family didn't have _kids,_ Javi, they had _legacies_. And I wasn't the legacy they wanted.” His shoulders shook slightly as he tried to breathe as evenly as he could. This was the hardest part to say. The part that hurt the most. “They disowned me. When I was eighteen.”

“What? Why?” Jenny' voice was low and incredulous.

“I decided I was going to go my own route. It was a combination, really. They liked me less and less, I liked _them_ less and less, and then I applied to and got into community college. Can you imagine the blowout when I told them that? I think he screamed himself hoarse. A Ryan, the oldest Ryan boy, going to _community college_ to be a _cop_. My father told me- He told me 'boy, if you walk out that door you are dead to us.' And I guess I should have known he didn't mean it metaphorically.”

Looking at Jenny and Javier's expressions, Kevin's lips twitched into a half smile. “Brady always did take things a step too far and then another step just for spite. He... They told people I was dead.”

“They _what_?”

“Yeah. There's even a- a memorial page. On the complany website. It's hard to find, way back through a bunch of dead links, but it's there. 'Kevin Ryan 1981-1999' and my senior picture. They told everybody there'd been an accident, I'd died, and it was too _painful_ for them to talk about. Nobody even brings me up in interviews anymore. They used to. Never got any of them to say anything, they played the part of grieving family well. I guess I was just... I guess I was of better use to them dead than I was alive. It worked, too. Nobody every figured it out. I guess it wasn't an automatic logical jump, right, from a dead heir to a worldwide empire to a random community college kid. Worked as a waiter at a diner for a couple of years, putting myself through school. Never heard from them again, and they didn't hear from me.” Shrugging, Kevin let out a dark, breathy chuckle. “So, that's it. Kind of anticlimactic, right? My family is full of a bunch of crappy people. And that is why they probably told you that I killed my brother. Whether or not you believe that, I-”

“Kevin!”

“Honey no, we-”

“Sorry,” the Irish detective muttered, pushing off the counter and looking out the window, still refusing to meet either of their eyes. “Just... It's just been a really long day.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose with shaking fingers. “I'm sorry, guys, I. I need to talk to Gates. Explain, or see what she knows, or... I've got to talk to her.”

Jenny nodded, standing up and leaning up on her toes to kiss Kevin on the cheek. She wrapped her arms around him and laid her head against his chest for a second. “It's going to be okay. You've got your family right here. We're all going to be just fine.” When she released him Javier pretended not to see that both their eyes were reddened and too bright. While Jenny went to get herself a glass of water, Javier took the opportunity to hug Kevin as well, mutter a few words something along the lines of what Jenny had said. He patted his friend on the shoulder then let him go, watching with a frown as the man walked out of the room.

“I'm worried about him,” said Jenny from behind him. Javier turned around and nodded.

“Yeah, me too,” he agreed. “You had no idea?”

“None. You?”

“No.”

Sighing and sitting carefully back down, Jenny dropped her head to the back of the couch. “We can't let this destroy him, Javier.”

“No. We can't. And we won't. Kevin's strong. He'll survive this.” Readying himself to go back out and see what Kate and Rick had dug up, Javier squeezed Jenny's shoulder. “And we're gonna do everything we can to make sure he does. I've gotta go keep working on the case. You should probably head home soon. See if he'll go with you.”

“M hm.” Jenny's face was creased in concern, one hand rubbing absently across her stomach. “Good luck.”

“You too.”

…

“How'd it go?” Kate asked when Javier got back to his desk.

“It was...” There was an internal struggle going on, between telling Kate and Rick everything and keeping Kevin's secret a secret. “I- Well, he-”

“You don't have to tell us,” she interrupted. “You don't have to break his trust, I wouldn't ask you to do that to him. Just tell us what we need to know.”

“It ended bad with his family. They haven't seen or spoken to each other in fifteen years, and it was to the point that they would try and point us towards thinking Kevin killed Connor out of spite, or anger, or somethin'. Point is, there's no real basis behind them saying he had motive. Whatever was up with that company, the inheritance or whatever, Kevin didn't want anything to do with it.” He looked from Kate to Rick. “Is that enough?”

“Yeah.” Kate smiled at him. “That's enough.” She watched Javier out of the corner of her eye as she leant over to check the computer screen. This wasn't easy for any of them, and she imagined it was even harder on Javier than it was on her and Rick, as he was the closest to Kevin. And if Javier was this bothered by the situation, she could only imagine how hard Kevin was taking it. “We found the fiancée. Castle and I were just waiting for you to get back to check in before we left to talk to her. Also there were prints on the gun they found in the storm drain down the road. Why don't you see if CSU is finished running those. Might give us a suspect.” He nodded, waving briefly as she and Rick left the building.

Anything that might lead to a suspect who wasn't his best friend seemed like a good idea to Javier, so he picked up the phone and dialed CSU.

“Hey, it's Esposito. Get a match on the prints on the gun from the Connor Ryan crime scene yet?”

“Yes, we have,” replied the crime lab tech on the other end, Shana Lowry. “It came back to a drug dealer named Ross Denver.”

“Thanks.” Javier hung up the phone, then pulled up Ross Denver's records. There was an address listed. He stood, grabbing his coat off the back of his chair.

It was time to pay Ross Denver a visit.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god don't look at me i'm terrible and i haven't updated in eighty two years
> 
> pls enjoy the chapter leave a review come bug me on tumblr (i'm frostlawyer)
> 
> (i apologize that this might be a slightly boring chapter but this is a case fic and so i kinda had to do something about. you know. the case.)

>  god grew lonely
> 
> in the days before light
> 
>  
> 
> so he made himself  **an heir**
> 
>  
> 
> **and in the same breath**
> 
> invented  **regret**.
> 
>  
> 
> - tumblr user screwballdame

Chapter Six

The Pine Avenue Country Club was exactly what you would expect out of a place called the Pine Avenue Country Club.

It was polished, manicured, and pristine. Kate felt very uncomfortable there, like the people were all staring, judging her. They had tracked Riley Macke down to this particular place (“How many Riley Mackes could there possibly be engaged to Connor Ryans who go to country clubs in the area.”), and as they walked through the door into the inexplicably air conditioned lobby she looked around to see if the woman in the picture was there.

“What about here?” asked Rick, giving her a lackluster smile.

She raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Venues. Like the look of this place?”

Kate made a face. Rick laughed, but his heart wasn't in it. His focus was back at the precinct, with Kevin and their current problem. So was hers. They were all distracted, and would be until this case was over and done with.

“Excuse me,” Kate said, pressing the desk bell to get the counter girl's attention.

“Yes?” The girl sounded bored, looking both Kate and Rick over with dull eyes.

“I'm Detective Kate Beckett with the NYPD, this is Richard Castle, we're here looking for Riley Macke. Can you tell us where we can find her?”

Upon seeing the badge that Kate tapped on the counter, the girl straightened, seeming to wake up more. “Oh yeah, her.” She had a heavy New York accent, one so thick it was almost difficult to listen to her talk. “Comes in all the time with her brother, or her fiancé, if she can drag 'im in.”

“And can you tell us where she is right now?” Kate was attempting to keep ahold of her impatience, but some of it leaked out into the words. The girl shot her a look.

“Aren't you in a hurry... Fine, she's out on the lawn with Justin, her brother.”

“Thank you,” called Rick over his shoulder as Kate and he turned away from the desk and headed outside to the country club lawn.

Recognizing Riley immediately from her photo, Kate quickened her pace. The small red haired young woman was walking beside a tall, broad shouldered man with the same shock of bright copper hair and dusting of freckles as her. Justin Macke, Kate assumed, walking brusquely and not really bothering with making sure Rick was keeping up.

“Riley Macke,” she called when they got close enough that if Riley and or her brother ran they wouldn't be that hard to catch.

“Yeah?” Riley turned around, frowning. “Do I know you?”

“Detective Beckett, NYPD. I need to ask you a few questions regarding your fiancé.”

“Why? Is Connie in some kind of trouble?”

Taken aback, Kate looked for any hint of deceit in her eyes and, finding none, came to the realization that the Ryans hadn't even called Connor's fiancée and told her he was dead.

“I'm sorry to have to inform you of this, but Connor Ryan was killed last night,” she said gently. Riley's gasp of horror and the way her dimpled face crumpled struck a pang in Kate's heart. The longer she stood here the less she believed that Riley was their killer. She had an air of innocence about her, and besides that she was tiny. Kate had a hard time believing someone who looked like she could have been knocked over by a stiff wind could have stabbed a man Connor's size once, much less twice.

“Wait, what do you mean 'was killed'. You're not making this sound like an accident, Detective Beckett. Was Connor murdered?”

Justin Macke, on the other hand, was easily six foot four and looked as if he spent at least five days a week pumping iron in the gym. One look towards Rick told Kate he was thinking roughly the same thing.

“I'm afraid he was,” Kate said, her voice soft and sympathetic. Riley let out a stifled cry of anguish, turning and burying her face in Justin's chest.

“Do you know who did it?” Justin demanded, rubbing his sister's shoulder comfortingly.

“That's what we're trying to find out,” answered Rick, eyeing his face.

“Mr. Macke, could you please tell us where you were last night, between the hours of eight and eleven?”

Justin looked at Kate with wide, shocked green eyes. “Me? You're asking _me_ for an alibi?”

“We're just trying to solve Connor's murder as quickly as possible,” she said evenly.

“Fine.” By now Justin's face had made the switch from concerned and confused to openly defensive and hostile. Unsurprising, as Kate had just – in a roundabout way – accused him of murder. “I was here.”

“At night?” Rick couldn't help himself. The question just burst out, ripe with disbelief.

“There was a charity event,” interjected Riley, sniffling and remaining at Justin's side, his arm around her. “It went from eight until midnight. Golf under the stars, that's how they advertised it. For the Lanley Children's Hospital. We were both here. I tried to get Connie to come but he... He...” Riley broke off, covering her mouth.

“You can check with the front desk,” Justin said with a stony expression. “They use electronic locker keys. There should be a log of when we left, about twenty minutes after midnight. Now if that's all, I would really rather you left. My sister is very upset.”

The girl at the desk did indeed confirm that the Macke siblings hadn't left the Pine Avenue Country Club until 12:24 AM. From there, Kate and Rick headed towards Ryan Global Inc.'s main office building downtown.

“We're running out of suspects,” Rick said quietly as the car approached RGI headquarters.

“We _will_ find out who did this. That's not a question here.” As she spoke, Kate kept her eyes glued firmly to the road in front of them. Her hands were wound tight around the steering wheel, knuckles white. “We're going to clear Kevin's name.” Kate fell silent. She shifted uncomfortably, unaware that Rick was doing the same thing in the seat beside hers. There was a question hanging in the air, one neither of them was willing to lend a voice to.

What if they were wrong. What if he wasn't the man they thought they knew so well. What if this was all for nothing. What if they were chasing after a suspect that didn't exist.

What if Kevin Ryan was a murderer.

Kate tried to picture it. Kevin standing in a dark, rain drenched alley, staring into a pair of eyes identical to his own. Putting a hand on his estranged little brother's shoulder and moving as if to embrace him, instead thrusting a kitchen knife deep into the young man's body. Once. Twice. Deciding it was taking too long and pulling out a weapon purchased from a drug dealer. She tried to imagine Kevin, who always brought other people coffee when he went to get some himself, who had a fondness for cats and was picky about textures, standing over Connor and pulling the trigger.

It was so ludicrous a thought that she almost laughed out loud. It just wasn't possible. Of all of the people who could conceivably slaughter someone in cold blood – slaughter a _sibling..._ Kevin Ryan just didn't make the list.

But all the while she kept remembering every family member she had ever spoken to, every sister who insisted her brother couldn't have done this, every intelligent, capable adult who swore up and down and sideways that there was no way their friend had committed this atrocity. And in that moment, she was all too acutely aware that she sounded exactly like every one of them.

Those chilling, unwelcome thoughts were silenced by the sight of a looming behemoth of a stone and glass building, the letters RGI cast in shiny metal capitals over a revolving door. They were there, at the doorway of the life Kevin was supposed to have.

It was almost as hard to picture as Kevin killing someone; him walking in through those doors with a hundred dollar haircut, a briefcase, and permafrost blue eyes. Kate shuddered, parking the car and walking into Ryan Global Incorporated with Rick close behind her. She walked right up to the counter, flashing her badge at the secretary.

“Detective Beckett, NYPD,” Kate said, introducing herself as such for the second time in as many hours. The man who looked up from the computer and flashed her a smile was significantly more alert than the girl at the country club.

“Can I help you?” he asked politely. The placard on the counter read 'GARRETT JENNER' in sleek silver letters.

“Mr. Jenner, I'm going to need to speak to someone who knows all of the secretaries on this company's payroll, is there someone in personnel you can direct me to?”

“May I ask what this is about?” Jenner asked, folding his arms and regarding her with a coolly raised eyebrow. “We value privacy here at RGI. I can't just hand over a list of the people who work here.”

“We're here investigating a murder.” Under normal circumstances, Kate would not have been that abrupt or blunt, but given these were anything but normal circumstances, she thought she'd acted remarkably even-temperedly.

His brows shooting to his neatly gelled hairline, Jenner looked startled. “Oh. Well. In that case, uh, that person would be me. I know all the secretaries who work here. I interviewed most of them. Who are you looking for?”

“Anyone who might have had a personal connection to Connor Ryan, your CEO's son.”

“The one you're thinking of is Erin Collins.”

Kate gave him a strange look. “That was awfully fast, are you sure?”

“Detective, there isn't a secretary or assistant in this building that doesn't know Erin was. Um. _Involved_ with Connor Ryan. She's not the first or the only, either. If you want a full list, that's gonna take a while.”

There was a hint of distaste in his voice, as if he found the idea beneath him. Kate got the distinct impression that Garrett Jenner was not the kind of person she wanted to spend any more time around than she absolutely had to.

“Can you tell us where we can find her?”

“Hang on a moment. I haven't exactly memorized where they all work out of.”

Rolling her eyes when Jenner's attention was diverted down to the computer screen in front of him, Kate then shot a quick look at Rick. From his less than impressed expression she could guess that he wasn't exactly enjoying this little exchange either.

“Fourteenth floor, room 14-14-B. She should be right outside there.”

Without pausing to thank him, Kate was already off towards the elevator, Rick mere steps behind her. The ride up to the fourteenth floor was as tense and stiff as the car ride to RGI had been. Both of their thoughts were not with them in the building but across town, with their friend. When the elevator dinged, signaling that they had arrived at their destination, Kate jumped, startled. Rick shot her a reassuring smile, and they stepped out, turning down the hallway towards rooms 1 through 15.

Erin Collins looked disturbingly like Riley Macke, except her hair was short and dark brown. They had the same bright green eyes and scattering of freckles across the bridge of their noses and pale cheeks. She was sitting behind a desk, fingers flying in a blur over a keyboard when they arrived.

Before they could reach her, however, a woman stepped out of room 14-11-A and stopped them. She had dark curly hair, warm brown skin, and a piercing, shrewd gaze. The woman stood in front of Kate and Rick with her arms folded and an unimpressed, rather exasperated look on her pretty face.

“Are you the police investigating?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah, that's me. Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD.” Neither Kate nor Rick had any idea who she was or why she'd stopped them. “Why?”

“This is _unbelievable_ ,” the stranger huffed under her breath. “I can't _believe_ him.”

“What?” Rick was utterly bewildered. “Can't believe who?”

“Sorry,” she said, louder. “I'm Alisha Mendez, I'm a friend of Keelan.”

_Oh_ , thought Kate. _Fantanstic._

“She told me you were coming by. Asked me to tell you where she was last night.”

In all her years as a detective, this was the first time Kate had ever found herself in a situation like this. “Um. Alright.” She jolted her head slightly to clear her confusion. “Where was she?”

“She was with me.” Alisha ground her teeth, shaking her head. Oddly hostile, for someone delivering an alibi for someone who wasn't even a suspect. “We had a girls' night while our kids were with Des.” Upon noting their confused expressions, Alisha seemed to only grow more incredulous. “Desmond. Desmond Linder. Her husband. But of course, you already know that part.”

Blinking slowly, Kate attempted to sort through the facts of this off-putting, bizarre interaction. So Keelan had been with her friend when Connor was killed. That was the only pertinent piece of information Alisha had delivered so far. Kate had no way of knowing who Desmond Linder was, much less that he was Keelan's husband, and she hadn't a clue why Alisha thought she should've known that.

“Well?” asked Alisha sharply. Everything about her posture and expression radiated cold disapproval. “Is that all you need to know?”

“Um, yes. Thank you?”

Shaking her head again, Alisha then turned and slammed the door to her office, causing Erin Collins to look up from her desk. She watched Kate and Rick approach with concern and confusion. On the way to speak with her, Rick leant over and whispered in Kate's ear.

“That was weird. I mean, it's not just me, is it. That was weird, right?”

“It was weird,” Kate answered in a normal tone as they reached Erin's desk, not sparing Rick a glance. It wasn't like they had time to hash out the possible meanings and intricacies of the offbeat conversation they'd just had with a very peculiar woman. They had a suspect to ask an alibi of.

“Excuse me, what's going on?” asked Erin, growing more worried by the moment, two strange and vaguely intimidating people standing in front of her.

After sparing a second to wonder if she ever got tired of saying 'Detective Beckett, NYPD', Rick touched Kate's shoulder, muttering that he'd be 'right over here'. She nodded slightly, not really aware of what he'd just said, then squared her shoulders and refocused on Erin. She didn't really look like a killer.

Then again, they rarely did.

Going through the same 'Connor Ryan is dead do you know anything about that' dog and pony show that she had been through once already, Kate ascertained that Erin Collins, much like Riley Macke, hadn't had a clue that the Ryan Global Incorporated heir had been murdered. After calling down and checking with security to verify that Erin really had left too late to make it down to the scene of the killing within their timeframe, Kate thanked the woman and walked over to Rick.

“-ure. Yeah. Thanks. I'll see you soon,” Rick was saying when she came to a stop beside him. He hung up his phone and put it in his pocket, looking at her. “Done?”

“Yeah. Her alibi checks. Wasn't her.” Kate sighed, looking around the pristine, chilly hallway. They were back to square one, staring in the face of the one possibility none of them wanted to consider. Rick nudged her, catching her gaze.

“Hey. We'll figure this out. You didn't believe it when I was accused of killing that girl, remember? You proved that one wrong. We'll get this one too. Kevin's going to be okay.”

Kate wished she had that kind of faith left to spare.

The return to the 12th saw Kate and Rick walk, heavy hearted and weary shouldered, out of the elevator, immediately spotting Alexis and Martha. They were standing by Javier's empty desk, a reusable fabric grocery bag sitting on the hard wood surface.

“Thanks guys,” Rick said, kissing one then the other on the cheek. “Means a lot.”

“It was no problem, dad,” Alexis said. “It sounds like you guys have had a really rough day. Is Ryan okay?”

“No,” Kate said quietly, dropping into her chair with a heavy sigh. “He's not.”

“We're working on that, though,” added Rick. He turned to Martha, motioning towards the break room – occupied by a lone Kevin – with his head. “Why don't you...”

“Yes of course.” Martha reached into the bag, taking out two styrofoam containers and a thermos. “I'll be back soon.”

“As long as it takes.”

She waved a hand in her son's direction, walking into the break room and greeting Kevin with a smile.

It was then that Jenny returned from the bathroom, stopping beside Rick and voicing the question on Kate's mind.

“What's Martha doing here?” she asked. She recognized the actress from the handful of dinners they'd all gathered together for.

“Yeah, what's going on?” interjected Kate, mystified both by Alexis and Martha's presence and by Martha and Rick's odd exchange.

“Well,” Rick said in a warm, fond voice, watching Martha speak to Kevin as she unpacked the dinner he'd asked her and Alexis to bring, “whenever there's something deeply bothering me, something terrible going on, the one thing that always without fail manages to somehow make things better is a talk with my mother. And, given our dear friend's mother is not only part of the problem but I'd imagine from my brief interaction with her that she's not very good at pep talks either, I figured he could. Well. Share mine.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im so sorry
> 
> this got left off for Way Too Long again
> 
> because i am a useless paperclip of a human being and i can't ever update anything in a timely fashion
> 
> also because finals [nervous vibrating]
> 
> pls enjoy the chapter leave a review come bug me on tumblr
> 
> (i used to be frostlawyer, now i'm agentlixspecter)
> 
> featuring: a Martha Rogers Pep TalkTM (never written her before, that was nerve wracking), and an interrogation
> 
> nothing is as it seems
> 
> [spooky finger waggles]

 

> god grew lonely
> 
> in the days before light
> 
> so he made himself  **an heir**
> 
> **and in the same breath**
> 
> invented  **regret**.
> 
> \- tumblr user screwballdame

Martha sat in a comfortable silence, watching Kevin pick at the pasta in the styrofoam container in front of him. He didn't seem that hungry and she didn't blame him. Rick hadn't told her everything, but he had told her enough to know that the young man in front of her was having the end all and be all of rough days. In the years since Rick had started working with the detectives of the 12th, all three of them had become fixtures in Martha's life, practically from the start. She knew Kevin and Javier nearly as well as she knew Kate.

This boy was part of her family, and if he was hurting then, well, she was going to do her damnedest to help him, even if all she could do was bring him dinner and have a talk.

Kevin eyed the thermos on the table next to the container of pasta.

“We have coffee here, you know,” he said, raising an eyebrow at her.

“That isn't coffee,” Martha answered with a snort, picking it up and unscrewing the lid, pouring some of the fragrant, steaming beverage into a mug. “This is hot chocolate. I have a recipe I used to make all the time when Richard was younger, he swore up and down for the longest time that it was magic. Besides.” Now it was her turn to raise an eyebrow at him. “You look like you've already had more caffeine than a person should physically have in a day. You would vibrate right out of your skin if you had any more.”

He laughed quietly, picking up the mug and holding it in his hands, feeling the warmth from the hot chocolate seep through the cup and into his palms. “Yeah. I probably would.”

A calm silence descended upon the room. Martha watched him with shrewd eyes. After a while, Kevin broke the silence again.

“Not that I don't...” Kevin said slowly, awkwardly. “Not that I don't _appreciate_ this, Martha, I really do, but why are you here?”

“Oh sweetheart,” Martha sighed, clasping her hands on the table in front of her and looking at Kevin warmly. “I'm here because Richard called me. He's worried about you. I'm worried about you too. I can see that there's something heavy on your mind. You look like you need to talk.” She touched his wrist gently, trying to keep his eyes on her from where they'd wandered to the table top. “I may not know the whole story, but I know enough. And I've been told I'm a good listener.”

Kevin started and stopped several times, beginning to speak and then cutting himself off before he could even finish a single word. Eventually he asked her dully, “How much do you know?”

“I don't know the details. Richard told me what he thought was necessary, what he thought was alright for him to tell. The rest is up to you.” Martha breathed deeply and shifted into a more comfortable position in her seat before continuing. “I know that your brother is dead, and I'm very sorry for your loss. Must be hard.”

Shaking his head, Kevin gave Martha a look that was pure stress and exhaustion. “You know, everybody keeps saying that to me. 'Sorry for your loss'. Like they think I'm gonna break any second. Like losing my brother is killing me inside the way that it should be.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it's not! I'm not... I'm reacting to this all wrong. I'm _pissed_ at Connor. I want to. I want to _kill_ whoever murdered him.”

“Well that's not exactly unusual,” Martha said gently.

“No! It's not! I'm not... I don't want the killer dead because Connor is, I want them dead because they're ruining my _life_. This is tearing apart every good thing that has ever happened to me. I don't care that my brother is dead, I don't _care_. And that is _ripping me to shreds_. I didn't know him, Martha. I never really knew him. He was eight the last time I saw him, and now he's dead, and I _didn't know him_. Everybody keeps telling me they're _sorry for my loss_ but I haven't lost anything. I'm reacting to this wrong. I'm not upset about him, I'm not _grieving_. What is _wrong_ with me.”

Martha kept silent, waiting for him to continue. Kevin got up from his chair, trembling hands raking roughly through his hair.

“This is my fault.”

That one took Martha by surprise. “What on Earth led you to that conclusion?”

“When I left- uh. When I left for college, my family disowned me. Cut off contact entirely.”

She displayed no reaction other than a slight widening of the eyes. There was no circumstance over the sun in which she could imagine deliberately removing Rick from her life. Kevin caught onto it though.

“Yeah. It's. A long story. Long story short? I chose to go to college and abandon my eight year old baby brother with my parents and my sister. Not exactly a healthy environment for a kid. And I... I left him there. I had an _obligation_ to him, I was his brother. His big brother. And if there's _anything_ that I've learned from being out of that god damn house...” He glanced out of the window, at Javier leaning out of an interview room and speaking with Rick. “It's that brothers protect each other. He was eight, and I just. I just walked away. I could have saved him, I _should_ have saved him.” Kevin walked over the the wall and leaned back against it, rumpled suit jacket hanging over slumped shoulders. “My brother is dead. And I didn't even know him. 'Cause I abandoned an innocent eight year old in a very, _very_ special brand of hell. Just to save myself.”

“You listen here, Kevin Ryan.”

He looked up as Martha stood and folded her arms.

“You are _not_ at fault here. There is no right way to feel right now, no right way to respond to something that comes out of the blue and turns your entire world inside out. By your own admission, you didn't know the boy. Sweetheart, there is no obligation on your to feel or react a certain way. And as for being responsible for what happened to Connor... Even if you had stayed with those horrible people, how can you be sure the result would have been changed?”

“You cannot put the burden of what happened to him on your own shoulders. Connor was his own man, he made his own choices. And I don't know how he ended up where he is, but it is certainly not through any fault of yours. You cannot make yourself responsible for the decisions of others, or live your life playing with imaginary 'what if's. You'll crush yourself under the weight of it. Kevin, you did what you had to do in order to survive, and I am so, so proud of you. You got out. I have faith in you. I don't believe you did this. And I have faith in your team. They'll work out who's done this. You'll be okay.”

Lifting a hand to his temple, Kevin attempted to shield the way his face contorted, twisting in an attempt to contain everything he was feeling. His chest felt tight, breath caught behind a lump in his throat. “Martha, I...” The words were choked out. “I don't know what to... to say, I-”

“Oh hush, darling.” Martha walked over and brushed her hands across his shoulders, rings glittering in the harsh station lighting. She straightened his jacket to the best of her ability and then stood in front of him, holding eye contact. “Now. You go out there and take your wife home. Have a nice dinner and get a good night's sleep. I'm sure they'll have it sorted out before you know it. Keep your chin up. Life has a way of figuring itself out, even when it seems hopeless.”

Kevin nodded, taking a deep breath. “Alright. Okay. Thank you so much, Martha, you really didn't have to do this.”

“Nonsense! It's no trouble at all. Get along, then.”

Martha shooed him out of the break room and stood in the doorway, watching him walk up to Rick. She was too far away to hear what the detective was saying to her son, but Rick was smiling and nodding, seeming to be reassuring Kevin of something. She watched Kevin gratefully hug Rick, who grinned and patted his back, returning the embrace. A few minutes later, after leaving Kevin with Jenny, Rick walked up to her.

“Well, whatever you said to him, it worked. Congratulations, mother, you are a miracle worker.”

Martha spread her hands, smiling at him. “I do what I can. He just needed to hear that what happened to Connor wasn't his fault from somebody he didn't think had an obligation to say it. Boy, I would really like to get my hands on those parents of his. Why some people are allowed to have children is beyond me...”

“Yeah,” Rick sighed, shaking his head. “You and me both.”

....

Ross Denver was a pale, nervous looking young man of about twenty-something, with longish stringy hair, sallow pale skin, and dim eyes that darted from place to place, scouring the interview room. Javier wasn't sure what it was he was looking for, but regardless, he was not in the mood. A palm slapping down on the table between them was enough to startle Denver's attention back towards Javier.

"Hey!" he snapped, holding the drug dealer's gaze with expressive brown eyes hard as stone. "I'm talking to you. You wanna maybe answer me some time this year?"

"I don't know what you want me to say here, dude, I don't know jack about no gun."

"Your prints are on the gun," Javier ground out through clenched teeth. He was about at the end of his rope with Denver's protestations of ignorance. "The heir of a very large software empire is dead and trust me, this is not one you want to go down for. I don't care what you're into. I don't care about the drugs. I don't care about any of that. All I want-" here he slammed down a photo of the gun, "-is to know who you sold the gun to."

"Like I've said, Detective, I. Don't. _Know_. Guns aren't my thing."

"Really? Then explain to me this prior conviction for an unlicensed .22, Denver." It was like the dealer wasn't even trying. "Unlicensed gun. Possession with intent to sell. That's two strikes. Do you really want your third to include felony first degree murder?"

It was easy for Javier to see that Denver's resolve was getting shaky. It wouldn't be too long before he cracked.

"Look at this." Then out came the crime scene photo of Connor Ryan, splayed out on the ground with clouded blue eyes staring skyward, blood saturating his once neat button up. "Look at this. Do you wanna go to jail for this? Because right now, you're lookin' like a pretty good suspect to me."

"Dude, not cool, oh my go- Alright! Alright. Fine, I sold the piece, just put the pictures away."

Now they were getting somewhere.

"That wasn't so hard, was it? Who'd you sell the gun to."

"I don't know, a guy."

"'A guy'? That isn't gonna cut it, Denver, I need a name."

The man shrugged helplessly, shifting in his chair. "I told you, I don't know!"

Javier closed his eyes for a second, hand clenched in a tight fist on the table top. They were running out of leads, and if he couldn't get enough out of Ross Denver to track down a viable suspect – a viable suspect other than Kevin – things weren't looking good. After taking a deep breath in an attempt to regain some patience or calm, Javier looked back at Denver.

"Can you describe him for me then?"

"Dude," Denver said, with a languid, throaty chuckle. "I was partyin' so hard, day I sold that gun."

"Describe him for me. As much as you can remember."

"Uhhhh..."

"How tall was he?"

Adopting a look of intense contemplation, Denver frowned. Javier stood up with an eye roll.

"Shorter or taller than me?"

It took a moment or two for an answer. "Eh. Shortish? Around your height I guess. White guy. Pale. Uh, dark brown hair."

"Was his hair long or short? Curly or straight?"

"Short. Don't remember."

Javier sat back down and looked at Denver intently. That was more than they'd had before. "Alright. White male, short dark hair, about my height. Anything else?"

"Um. Blue eyes? Like _really blue_."

The longer the description went on, the more uneasy Javier felt. It certainly didn't escape him who the description resembled. White. Pale. Around his height. Short dark brown hair. Blue eyes.

"Do you remember any distinctive markers? Scars? What was he wearing?"

"Dude I was so stoned, I-" At the look he got from Javier, Denver swallowed and straightened up, thinking harder than he probably had about anything in the past year. "He wore a suit. He- hang on, what are you playin' at?"

Okay, now Javier was officially bewildered. "What? What are you talking about?"

"This dude! Why're you asking me to describe him. This is some game to mess with my head, isn't it?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"He's right there?"

_What_.

"What?"

"The guy who bought the gun, Jesus don't you people know what you're talking about? He's right. There." Denver had gotten up and walked over towards the door into the interrogation room, jabbing a finger at the glass and, more to the point, the people visible through the glass. Looking out to where he was pointing, Javier shook his head. There wasn't anybody visible through the window except for Rick, Kate, Jenny, Alexis, and-

"Right there, like I said, short brown hair, white dude, about your height, wearing a suit. See, he's walkin' over here."

-and Kevin.

Who was walking in the direction of the water fountain next to the interview room. Ross Denver had just identified Kevin as the man who had bought the gun that killed Connor Ryan.

_Fuck_.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a terrible person and I update slowly and I have no good excuse for you.
> 
> Also writing interrogations sucks. I don't know what I am doing. I am not a cop. [hides]
> 
> Anyway. Only like. Two or three more chapters left after this, gosh. What am I going to do with my life after this. (Well. I have a Castle/Supernatural crossover on the books and also a massive Avengers Assemble Except Hackers crossover type thing with like five different 'verses. So.)
> 
> (Come bug me on tumblr, I'll update faster if you do probably. I'm agentlixspecter!)

> god grew lonely
> 
> in the days before light
> 
>  
> 
> so he made himself  **an heir**
> 
>  
> 
> **and in the same breath**
> 
> invented  **regret**.
> 
>  
> 
> - tumblr user screwballdame

"Hey dude, you okay there? You're not havin' a stroke, are you? _Shit_ man, I do not know first aid."

The force of the glare Javier leveled at Denver could have melted through a sheet of lead.

"Hey," he snapped, grabbing a fist full of the man's shirt, hauling him close to the window and pointing at Kevin. "Are you telling me that's the guy who bought the gun from you?"

"Yeah, man, seriously, I just told you that. Are you sure you're not having a stroke?" The look on Javier's face was enough to shut Denver up.

Devoting absolutely no brain power to the dealer constantly inquiring as to the state of his health, Javier unclenched his fist and released Denver, who immediately backpedalled several paces. He was too busy staring in disbelief at Kevin to worry about much else aside from the situation at hand. Evidence kept piling up, stacking the odds higher and higher against his partner. This did not look good.

Kevin's prints on the knife. His lack of a verifiable alibi. Keelan's insistence on his 'feud' with Connor, his supposed motive of a future lost to a golden child brother. And now Ross Denver, pointing at Kevin, identifying him as the purchaser of the gun that had killed Connor Ryan.

Javier just didn't believe it.

Unfortunately, not believing it simply wasn't an option. He walked out of the room, ignoring whatever Denver was calling after him. He strode purposefully past desks and bystanders, the door slamming behind him like a gunshot. He came to a grinding halt directly in front of Kevin. Everybody looked up when they heard that. Rick got halfway through a question before Javier cut him off, looking accusingly at his best friend.

"So help me, man, if you don't tell me the truth right now."

Kevin's eyes were almost comically wide, a reserve of hurt in them.

"What?" he asked, folding his arms across his chest in an unconscious defensive motion. His fingers tapped repetitively, moving in a blur.

"The gun that killed your brother, Kevin. You bought it."

"That's ridiculous! Javi where is this coming from? You know I didn't. You know I _wouldn't_."

"The dealer I'm interviewing just ID'd you as the guy who bought the gun."

His thoughts were cycling a thousand miles an hour, running through every possible scenario, all of it circling around to the same thing.

There had to be an explanation. Kevin did not do this.

Unfortunately, his aggressive stance, accusing words, and abrasive tone didn't seem to get that particular message.

"What aren't you telling me, Ryan?"

The words were out before he could stop them, and in that moment he was treated with the image of his best friend looking more betrayed than he'd ever looked the entire time they'd known one another, seared into his mind.

In the rational part of Kevin's mind, he understood why Javier was being this way. But the current situation did not lend itself to rationality, and all he could hear was 'I don't trust you'.

This entire situation was wholly disturbing to Kevin, shaking him to the core. Every event of the last few days piled up in his head. Connor's body, the rest of the Ryan family showing up, his father's vicious words, and now the one person he always thought he could count on to be in his corner was treating him like a lying, deceptive murder suspect. It was too much for him to carry on his own, and suddenly the hurt he was feeling poured out, bypassing the part of him saying 'stop and think about this, Ryan'.

"How many years have we known each other? How many times has your life been in my hands, huh? How many times has mine been in yours? God, I thought you understood. I thought you believed me. I thought you trusted me, I thought _I_ could trust _you_! Guess not, right?" He held out his upturned wrists, a challenge in his eyes and the clench of his jaw. "Well? Want to cuff me yourself? Put the last nail in it?"

At some point during Kevin's outburst - steadily increasing in volume and intensity - Victoria had exited her office, her attention captured by the commotion and was now striding rapidly over to them.

"What is going on here?" she demanded, hands on her hips, fire in her eyes as she looked from one person to the next. Nobody spoke a word. Truthfully, nobody was entirely sure what was going on. Jenny was shocked and horrified, Rick was wondering if he should step in, and for their part Kate, Martha, and Alexis were just confused.

"Well?"

Victoria's sharp voice caused Kevin to flinch violently, cringing away from the force in her question. "Somebody had better tell me what's going on right now or so help me-"

"Ross Denver." All eyes now turned to Javier, who in turn was looking at Kevin, an apology the only readable thing in his expression.

"The drug dealer whose prints you pulled off the gun?" Upon seeing his curt nod, Victoria gestured with one hand, eyebrows arched expectantly. "And? Did you get a name out of him?"

If he opened his mouth now it would all be over.

One sentence from Javier and Kevin could very well go away for twenty five to life.And to be a cop in prison... Well, given the number of really bad guys Kevin had helped put in there, Javier could see it in his mind's eye, sitting next to Jenny while she heard how her husband, the father of her child, had bled out alone in some New York penitentiary's yard. He couldn't do that to her. Not to her, not to Kevin, and - selfish though it was - not to himself.

"Esposito? I'm waiting."

But he had to. There flat out were no more options. The fiancée had led nowhere. Her brother had led nowhere. The secretary had led nowhere. And the dealer had only led the one place Javier hadn't wanted to go - right to Kevin.

The clock had run out, the maze dead ended, the possibilities whittled down to one.

Kevin Ryan was going to go to prison for murder. And Javier Esposito was going to be the one that put him there.

"Denver gave me an ID."

It felt less like he was saying the words, and more like he was ripping them from his chest with an ice pick.

"You put him in front of a line up?"

"No. Uh. No, sir. He saw. Um. He saw Ryan through the window."

"I'm not following, Detective. You're gonna have to be just a bit more specific, seeing as we've got three extra Ryans running around right now."

His response was quiet and muffled, prompting Victoria to frown and take a step forward.

"A little louder, please?" Her voice and stance had softened, frustration replaced with growing concern and apprehension.

Victoria knew what he was going to say before he said it.

"Kevin. Ross Denver identified Kevin as the man who bought the gun from him."

Silence descended over the room.

After a few of the tensest moments he could remember, Victoria squared her shoulders and looked to Kevin.

"Much as I don't want to do this, it seems like we are left with no alternative. Detective Ryan if you would please proceed to an interrogation room."

Kevin opened his mouth like he was about to protest then snapped it shut when Victoria held up a hand.

"I will arrest you if I have to."

With his head bowed and Victoria's hand on his back, Kevin walked towards the room Ross Denver had shortly been pulled out of. As he passed Javier, he looked up, meeting his eyes. Javier looked away first. He couldn't stand watching that train barrel down the track towards a wreck that he'd caused.

The door closing behind Kevin and Victoria sounded like the swift clang of an axe on an executioner's block. Swift, loud, and final.

\- - -

“I told you already, Captain Gates, I just don't know.”

"You don't know? You don't know how your brother ended up dead, stabbed by a knife from your kitchen with your prints on it and shot by a gun whose seller identified you as the buyer. I don't want to believe it, Ryan, but from where I stand you haven't given me any evidence that would allow me to not believe it. Come on, you have to give me something to go on here.”

Sitting across from Victoria at the table, Kevin looked everywhere but at her. He'd never been on this side of an interrogation before, and he felt like a hunted animal, the wolves closing in on all sides. Cornered.

"I'm sorry. I can't."

"Let's go through this one more time, shall we?"

He had never been able to distinguish tones of voice and expressions had always been hard for him, but Kevin got the distinct feeling that Victoria was nearly at the end of her rope with the whole situation.

"I don't have anything more to tell you. I'm sorry. I just don't."

"Try."

Taking a deep breath, Kevin looked at his hands, twisting his fingers nervously. "Alright."

"Where were you when your brother was killed, Detective Ryan?"

"I was at a bridge. I _told_ you. I go there sometimes when I need to clear my head. Nobody saw me there.

“So just to be clear, nobody can corroborate this?”

It took every ounce of strength he had to contain his frustration, and even so, pieces of it leaked into his voice. “No one I have on speed dial.”

“Detective Ryan.”

“I don't know, maybe there were cameras in the area, you can check them.” The words came out robotic and monotonous as he repeated them for what felt like the twentieth time.

“Your alibi is dangerously thin.”

“You don't think I know that already?”

He didn't know how much more of this he could go through before he lost it completely. Victoria had been remarkably patient, he thought, given the circumstances. They all had. But there came a point at which no amount of patience or willingness to believe anything he told them so long as it proved his innocence was going to cut it. There was nothing more he had to say to her. Nothing more he had to say to any of them. But still there, she sat, with that notepad open in front of her, looking at him expectantly as she asked another question.

"Your prints were found on the knife, and it seems it comes from your kitchen set, can you explain that?"

"No, sir, I cannot."

Same old dog and pony show. 'Please, Kevin, we're handing you a way out of this on a silver platter, just tell us.' 'I can't, because there's nothing to tell.'

"What about the ID? The man you bought the gun from identified you."

"He saw a thirty-something white dude with brown hair from across a room. You know how many of us there are in this city? My guess would be in the thousands.” He knew that being sarcastic was probably not his best course of action, but he couldn't help it.

“ _Detective_.”

“I don't have an answer for you. I didn't buy the gun."

"Ryan." There was a warning in Victoria's voice. "I'm trying to help you out here because I've worked with you for years and I know you. But there is only so far I can go before I have to let the evidence speak for itself. I will not let this department harbor a murder, and if that means throwing you to the wolves, so be it."

Snorting as Victoria unknowingly parroted his earlier thought, Kevin shook his head. There was that imagery again.

"Is there something you find amusing about this situation?"

"No, sir."

"This is your last shot, Detective Ryan. You've got one chance to tell me what you know. Give me something. Anything. Because if not, there is only one place this is going."

Silence.

"Was it self defense? Tell me why you did it. A confession is going to look a lot better for you. We might be able to talk the DA into a plea if you confess. Why did you kill your brother?"

Ah.

There it was.

Tired eyes slid from a random spot on the wall over to Victoria with a hollow emptiness in them that unnerved her.

"Captain Gates, I can tell you exactly what I had for dinner the last time I saw my family fifteen years ago. I could recite word for word what my father shouted after me when I walked out the door. What my mother was wearing. The look on my sister's face. My brother's haircut. I could tell you any of that. But I cannot tell you why I killed my brother because. I. _Didn't._ "

Her shoulders rising and falling with the deep breath she took, Victoria looked at him evenly. She hated this. Hated having to do this. But she was the Captain of a police precinct, and it was her job not to let personal feelings about a... about a suspect get in the way of her job. If she let her preconceived notions of who this man was, who the detective who had served under her since her first day on the job at the 12th was, get in the way of doing what she would do were it somebody she didn't know, then she could not in good conscience remain an office of the law.

"I didn't want to do this, but I'm afraid there's no choice in the matter. Please stand up and put your hands behind your back."

Kevin wasn't sure which felt more like ice dripping through his veins. The metal of the handcuffs around his wrists or the words, echoing through his ears as he was marched down the hall, past every one of his coworkers and friends, past Kate and Rick, past Javier, past Jenny.

"Detective Kevin Ryan, you are under arrest for the murder of Connor Ryan. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you."

…

The walk down to holding felt longer than it ever had before. Javier could feel everyone's eyes on him as he crossed the room full of cops, all of whom had just witnessed his partner and best friend escorted down to a cell in handcuffs by the precinct Captain. It had taken several minutes to calm down a nearly hysterical Jenny, who was now sitting at his desk. Martha and Alexis were trying to keep her calm while Kate and Rick spoke to Victoria about what had happened in interrogation that could possibly have led to Kevin being arrested.

He had to talk to Kevin. Make sure he was okay. Apologize for the confrontation, for the accusations he'd leveled at a man he trusted more than anyone on the planet. If there was anything Kevin did not need right now, it was being treated like that by Javier of all people. Worry and stress did odd things to a person. For Javier it had always resulted in a shortened temper and an increased likelihood that he would lash out, usually at the people he was closest to.

The corridor lined with cells that made up holding was dimly lit and heavily shadowed. It gave off a decidedly gloomy air, and Javier shivered. He had never liked holding. It always gave him the creeps. But if there was one person who disliked it more than he did, it was Kevin.

When he came in sight of the temporary cell farthest down the hall from the staircase, he saw Kevin. It didn't look good.

Kevin was sitting with his back to the bars facing the hallway, leaning against them with his elbows propped on his knees and his head tipped back against a one of the cold steel rods imprisoning him. He looked over when he heard the sound of Javier's footsteps approaching. After identifying the source of the noise, Kevin rolled his head back against the bar, staring at the ceiling, unable to look in Javier's direction.

Sitting down on the opposite side of the gate as Kevin, leaning back against it, Javier said nothing. He sat in silence, seconds slipping by, waiting for Kevin to find his voice.

"I didn't kill my brother." Quiet. Weary.

"I know you didn't." Even. Reassuring.

It was at least a minute before Kevin spoke again, his words tripping over each other, voice cracking and shaking.

"They're... They are gonna take everything away from me."

Any reply Javier could have made caught in this throat, leaving him to simply sit and wait for Kevin to go on.

"I thought I was out, Javi. I thought I was safe. That they couldn't ever get to me again. I walked out the door and I never went back, just like they wanted. It was hard to make it alone but I did it, and everything I did led up to this, to this life. I built this. And they just... In a day. In a _day_ , they showed up and tore it right down. I always knew this would happen if they found me..." Sardonic blue eyes swept around the confines of the cell, and Kevin let out a brittle chuckle. "Well. Maybe not this exactly. But something. It was too good to last... Good things never last, not for me..."

Resisting the urge to march upstairs, hunt down the rest of the Rick family, and let them know exactly what he thought of what they'd done to his partner, Javier felt the urge to apologize rising in his chest. He couldn't stop thinking about what he'd said, up in the bullpen. The way he'd spoken to Kevin, the way Kevin had responded... That could very well be the last conversation he ever had with his best friend while they were both free men.

"I'm sorry," he said, staring at the wall across from him. He heard Kevin sigh and shift behind him.

"Don't be. I'd have reacted the same way. I get it."

The quiet was deafening. It didn't feel like enough.

"I'm sorry."

"I know."

"We're going to figure this out. We're going to prove it. We'll find a way. Everything is going to be alright. I promise, Kev. I promise."

"Okay."

Javier could hear what Kevin had really meant. The truth.

_I don't believe you. But thank you for trying._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come on. Guess. You know you want to.
> 
> Who killed Connor Ryan?


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more chapter oh my god what am i going to DO with my life when i'm done. sheesh.
> 
> find me on tumblr at aroharveyspecter!!

** Chapter Nine **

> god grew lonely
> 
> in the days before light
> 
>  
> 
> so he made himself **an heir**
> 
>  
> 
> ** and in the same breath **
> 
> invented **regret**
> 
> \- tumblr user screwballdame

When Javier returned to the now nearly deserted field of desks, his head was spinning. All he could think of was the way Kevin had looked, sitting alone in a cell, saying 'I'm fine' in an effort to get Javier to go back upstairs.

For once in his life, Javier wished that Kevin was capable of lying to him.

Leaving him there alone had felt like a betrayal, guilt lodged in Javier's chest like a block of lead. As he approached the clump of people around his and Kevin's desks, their words became audible.

“You don't have to be scared,” Alexis was saying to Jenny. “If anybody can figure this out, it's Esposito and Beckett and my dad. If anybody can help him, it's them.”

“Thanks honey but I'm not sure if even the best cops can work miracles,” Jenny sighed, swiping at her cheek with the back of the hand not resting on her stomach. “And this time... well, unless we can find a miracle, I'm afraid it's over.”

“We're not giving up that easy,” Javier announced, picking that moment to make his re-entry. Upon seeing him, all five of them sat up straighter, looking at him expectantly.

“How is he? Is he okay?” Jenny asked, anxiety coating her voice.

Looking into his friend's eyes, he found that he could not bring himself to lie to her.

“No, Jenny. He isn't.”

“What can we do?” spoke up Rick.

“Help me figure out who's doing this to him.” Javier had – to Rick's memory – never sounded so determined as he did in that moment. “They're gonna take him to get indicted tomorrow morning. We can't let that happen. That means we have, oh, roughly twelve hours, thirteen tops, to figure this whole thing out. Alright?”

Rick and Kate nodded. Out of the corner of his eye, Javier saw Martha shoot Alexis a look, the latter of whom gave a small nod in return. Before he had time to figure out what that all meant, Martha had stood up, gently touching Jenny's arm.

“Why don't you let me give you a ride back to our place tonight, darling. You can stay the night there, instead of all on your own.”

Jenny blushed. “Oh, Mrs. Rogers, I couldn't possibly impose like that.”

“Nonsense!” Martha waved a hand, smiling at her. “We're all family here, are we not? I can't bear the thought of you being by yourself tonight. Really, it's no trouble at all.”

A grateful expression ran across Jenny's tired face and she nodded. “Thank you so much.” Before she spoke again she looked to Javier. “Is it alright if I go and see Kevin?”

“I'll take her down,” Rick volunteered.

“Great,” said Javier. “Alright. Jenny, go and see Kevin. Martha and Alexis will take you home after. Castle, come and meet me and Beckett back here when you're done. Got it?”

It was a sign of how truly bleak the situation had become that Rick made no quip about 'breaking the huddle' or a 'team chant'. Instead he just dipped his chin, holding Javier's gaze.

“Got it.”

…

None of this made sense. Javier felt like he was trying to do a puzzle, staring at a board of evidence that just didn't add up, except the picture he was trying to piece together and the reference on the box did not match one another and half of the pieces were missing or damaged. They were running around in circles, chasing their own tails, and none of it was leading anywhere but sideways, backwards, and upside-fucking-down.

“Alright,” Rick said, re-entering the room after saying goodnight to Martha and Alexis, instructing them to take good care of Jenny. “Let's start from the beginning. Cold, basic facts, what do we know?”

“Connor Brady Ryan,” Kate read off, looking at the pristine photo clipped to the board. “Twenty five years old, youngest son of Brady and Quinlan Ryan and heir apparent to the Ryan family empire. Fiancée Riley Macke. Girlfriend Erin Collins. Collins knew about Macke but not vice versa. Stabbed then shot in an alley near a construction site.

“What's our suspect list?”

“Well there was Macke and her brother Justin, but they both alibied out. So did Collins. Other than that we're left with...” Kate trailed off, not wanting to go where that sentence was heading.

“We're left with Kevin,” Rick finished for her.

“Right.” Javier's voice was a quiet mutter, eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the board intently. Like maybe if he stared hard enough or long enough the evidence would rearrange itself, illuminating the path to clearing Kevin's name.

No such luck.

He looked to Kate for instructions – she was usually the one to hand them out at this point – but all he received in response was a shake of the head.

“This one's yours, Javier.”

He nodded at her, holding her gaze strongly. Kate nodded back. Her hand rested briefly on his shoulder as she passed him to stand by Rick. He felt her trust in that touch, her faith that he would move mountains if that's what it took.

And he would. For Kevin. For Jenny. For Kate and Rick and himself. For all of them. He had to.

“The autopsy report. I'm gonna go talk to Lanie again, see if there's anything she could possibly have missed the first time around.”

“What do you want us to do?” asked Rick. Javier stopped halfway out of his chair.

“Go talk to Ryan. See if there's anything, anybody he can think of that would want to put this murder on him.” Before the next words left his mouth, he hesitated. “And cross run all of this with 3XK.”

Rick's hand slipped against his desk, a mug crashing to the floor and shattering into a hundred pieces. “3XK. Shit. Why didn't we think of that sooner.”

But Kate was shaking her head even as he spoke.

“I'm not so sure. I mean think about it. Does any of this feel like 3XK?”

“We have to look into every possibility. Even if it doesn't feel like him, we have to check it. He's done this to us before, remember?”

Cringing at that unwelcome reminder, Kate shook herself. “Yeah. You're right.”

As she started after Rick towards holding, Kate hung back for a moment.

“We've been through this before,” she said quietly, even hazel eyes locked with worried brown. “We cleared Castle and we can clear Kevin too. This fight isn't over yet.”

“No,” he agreed, “it isn't.”

…

The morgue felt colder than it usually did. For a fleeting moment Javier wondered if the perceived drop in temperature was due to the late hour or the sense of impending doom hanging over the entire station. Most likely it was a combination of both, he decided, pushing open the door to the chilled room where the secrets of death were unraveled, hoping that Lanie was – by some stroke of luck – still there.

She was, sitting in a rolling chair, cheek in her hand, staring down at a file with a pen dangling listlessly from her fingers. When she heard Javier's footsteps echoing towards her through the deserted room, Lanie looked up. Her eyes, while normally bright with a sparkle of humor in them, were dull and tired. Looking down at her desk, Javier saw that the file splayed open before her was Connor Ryan's autopsy file. All of the details were there, from the angle of how his partner's brother had been stabbed to the name of the artery the bullet had ruptured.

“Kevin's been arrested.” In all the commotion upstairs, Javier figured nobody had bothered to call Lanie yet and update her on the case's progression.

“Damn,” she swore quietly, shaking her head. “ _Damn_. How's he doin'?”

“Not good. We...” he trailed off. “We need a miracle.”

“What was that?”

“It's just something Jenny said upstairs. She said it'd take a miracle to save Kevin now. And I think she's right. But just in case there's the slightest chance there's something we missed, some possibility we haven't ran down yet, we're triple checking everything. Including the autopsy report. Is there a chance you could've missed something?”

Lanie gave him a look. “Any other day but today and I would kick you right outta here for even suggesting that. As the situation stands though, I'm way ahead of you. Went over the report maybe a dozen times before I noticed it.”

Hearing that, Javier stood up straighter. “Noticed what?”

She stood and beckoned him over to the autopsy table upon which Connor Ryan's body lay. Moving his head with gentle hands, Lanie twisted the dead man's neck so that the smooth curve of shoulder and neck was clearly exposed. Javier peered into the magnifying lens she dragged over. There he saw, on Connor's pale, nearly pristinely unmarked skin, a dark, circular smudge. 

“What is it?” he asked, choking down and smothering the flickering sense of hope that had alit in his chest.

“It's a bruise. Latent bruising doesn't show up right away so I'd been hoping that if I waited long enough something would pop and, well... There you have it.”

“Do you have any idea what could have made it?” The mark was about two centimeters across with some sort of faint, in-discernible pattern in the center. 

“If I had to hazard a guess?” Lanie grabbed a glossy photo from the printer across the room, handing it to Javier. It was a blown up image of the bruise a few inches above Connor's collarbone. “Cufflink. Got trapped between Mr. Ryan's neck and the killer's palm when he was stabbed. See?” She stripped off her purple latex gloves and made as if she was holding a knife in her left hand, putting her right out to steady herself as she mimed stabbing Javier. Sure enough, from the position she was in, if her sleeve had been just long enough it was feasible to imagine a cufflink being pressed so hard into his skin as to leave a clear impression that would appear hours later. 

“See what you can make of it,” she said, closing the folder and handing it to him. “I'm afraid that's all I've got.”

He took it, nodding distractedly. “You should go home. Get some sleep. I'll update you in the morning.”

“You should too,” Lanie said with a shrewd raise of one eyebrow, “but I know you, and all three of you'll be here 'til the last possible second. Good luck. I hope you find your miracle.”

“Me too.” The words hung in the air behind Javier as he left, the door swinging shut after him.

By the time he reached the sea of desks again, the building was completely deserted save himself, Kate, and Rick. The night ticked on, the ability to visit down at holding long since closed off to them, theories thrown this way and that, all seemingly leading nowhere. Kevin had been able to give Kate and Rick no names when they went to talk to him, no idea who could possibly have this kind of a vendetta against him. All the evidence was still saying the same thing.

Their one bright spot – the realization that 3XK deserved consideration, especially given his history with frame jobs – soon dimmed as they took a look at the facts. Other than the frame up there seemed to be no crossover with his methods or habits. Connor Ryan wasn't his type, the method was too sloppy, none of it matched up. And when 3XK was behind something you damn well knew about it. There had been no calling card, no visit in disguise, no voicemail on an answering machine or piece of evidence displaying his name in flashing lights. No, he took credit for what he did, and this he did not do.

The three of them were left staring at the photo together, chugging down coffee and twisting it this way and that and trying to force their foggy, exhausted minds to come up with the answer. 

Hours later, along with the morning light, came the chilling realization that the marks on the cufflink were initials, and that they spelt out 'KR'.

Kevin Ryan.

…

Even with the proof laying right there in front of them, every cell in Javier's body was screaming at him 'this is  _wrong_ '. It didn't make sense. Objectively all the evidence was there, it was irrefutable. But intuitively? From somebody who knew Kevin? No chance. No chance in  _hell_ .

He sat and stared at the picture thinking ' _no'_ . Thinking about the man he knew, about Kevin Ryan who he'd seen laughing and crying, unconscious in a hospital and watching the love of his life walk down the isle. He'd seen Kevin shot twice and stabbed once, held hostage by various suspects upwards of a dozen or so times, Javier had seen all manner of terrible and wonderful things but out of all of that, this was the one that stopped him dead in his tracks. 

Javier stared at the photo of the bruise while Kate and Rick stared at him,a ll three of them trying to make any semblance of sense of it. Soundlessly, Javier pushed himself away from the damning photo – like separating himself from it could some how prevent it from existing or meaning what it meant – and clicked on his computer monitor. The page it displayed was still the Ryan Global Inc. homepage, and from there it was just a few short (albeit hard to find) links to a memorial page buried where almost no one would find it.

Ignoring the shocked murmuring from Kate and Rick behind him, seeing the extent of Brady's severing ties with Kevin for the first time, Javier raked his eyes over the page, looking for the thing that had snagged his notice when looking at the picture of the bruise.

In Loving Memory of Kevin Ryan

1981-1999

He had to suppress a shudder at that many lies condensed into one place, focusing instead on the photo below the words. Kevin looked so young and so unhappy. It was him but at the same time it wasn't, Javier mused, a sullen kid with his partner's eyes, trapped in a facade slowly suffocating him from the inside out. What he was looking for though lay not in the face of the boy whose past Javier desperately wished he could erase, but just above a pair of tightly clasped hands. 

Cufflinks, embossed with the initials 'KR'.

“Somebody please have a uniform go and get Kevin.”

“His arraignment ins't until-”

“Please. I need to talk to him. Now.”

Kate exchanged a look with Rick then flagged down Officer Alsley, speaking a few quiet words to her and watching with a pensive look on her face as Alsley and Brenner, a pair of recent hires, headed towards where Kevin was being held awaiting the arraignment. 

The way he was led up through the desks was a spectacle. His hands were held tightly behind his back in cold metal bracelets that dug sharply into his wrists. As he approached the desk, flanked by Alsley and Brenner, Javier looked down away from him, to the photos of the cufflinks in the picture and the bruise on Connor's neck.

He didn't say anything, setting the pictures in front of Kevin. He couldn't. Everything he could have said had been said already. 

“Those were mine, yeah,” Kevin admitted in a soft, hoarse voice. “But I pitched those cufflinks off a bridge the day I was disowned a decade and a half ago. Even if I had killed my brother, I couldn't have left that mark. I know it's weak but... It's all I've got.” Javier watched him look away and down, rotating his shoulders awkwardly in an attempt to ease the pressure the handcuffs put on his joints. It sounded bad. Worse than bad. It sounded like a 'guilty' verdict. 

I went for a walk alone.

I threw the cufflinks off a bridge.

I didn't buy the gun.

I don't know why the dealer identified me.

I have no idea who killed my brother.

It was a lot of words that all meant the same thing – in a court of law, in a murder trial, exactly nothing. 

Alsley and Brenner were escorting Kevin away towards the door when the sound of loud, furious footsteps drew the attention of everyone.

The truth of how the Ryan family had found out that Kevin was being arraigned right then was lost in the confusion, the handful of officers in the building standing stock still doing their best shocked-owl impressions as Brady Ryan thundered down the hall, a brick wall of rage and power headed straight for Kevin. Officer Brenner – all 5'2” of her – was knocked easily to the side, taken completely by surprise by the sudden accost. Before anybody had any idea what was happening, Brady had seized Kevin by the hair, wrenched his head back, and was screaming at him, sending the room into a flurry of motion as everyone in the vicinity attempted to subdue the man.

“ _You killed Connor_ . YOU MURDERED MY  _SON,_ YOU  _BASTARD_ .”

The sound Kevin's head made when it was slammed violently against the glass window set into the wall was sickening. Kevin hadn't even hit the floor, Brady still bellowing obscenities at the crumpled form of his oldest son, when Javier made it over. It took every ounce of restraint in his body not to shoot Brady right then and there, instead grabbing the man by the back of his jacket and his collar, hauling him away from Kevin, spinning and shoving him into a desk. 

“Touch him again and I swear to  _god_ I will shoot you right here and now,” he hissed in Brady's ear, ignoring whatever Quinlan Ryan was shrieking at him. It took him a few moments to register that Kate was shouting his name, looking over at her with fury bright in his eyes.

“What?”

Kate was kneeling on the floor beside a dazed looking Kevin, making eye contact with Javier and holding it. “Don't you have other things to worry about?”

“Go see if Detective Ryan needs a doctor,” spoke up a voice from just beside him. He turned to see Captain Victoria Gates, looking at Brady Ryan with more contempt than Javier had ever seen out of her before. When she spoke, her voice reflected the loathing in her eyes. “I'll deal with... this.”

Confident that Victoria had the situation handled sufficiently, Javier unclenched his hands from the expensive fabric of Brady's suit and quickly crossed the room to where Kate and Rick were crouched down next to Kevin. One glance at the glass pane he'd had his head slammed into displayed a blood smeared impact point, thin cracks spiderwebbing away from the central mark. Brady had thrown him against the window hard enough that his head had left behind slight breaks in the glass.

Javier swore under his breath, directing his attention to his downed partner. Kevin's hands were still held tightly in the cuffs, surely uncomfortable trapped between his back and the wall he slumped against. Rivulets of blood trickled sluggishly down his jaw from the injury just at the hairline of his left temple. Being as gentle as possible, Javier tilted his head to the side, trying to get a better look at it.

“I'm okay,” Kevin said unsteadily, blinking slowly and peering up at his friend. “I'm alright.”

“Yeah I doubt that, bro,” muttered Javier. He stood and, with Kate's help, carefully maneuvered Kevin up onto his feet. Sweeping his gaze around the room, Javier caught sight of something he wouldn't, not ever in his life, be able to forget.

Keelan Ryan, standing a few feet away, watching the proceedings with neither the vitriol of her father nor the hysteria of her mother. Her entire demeanor was calm, unflustered and unconcerned, as if she hadn't just witnessed her father crack a window with her little brother's head. Her eyes shone like glaciers and she smiled like a viper.

She folded her arms smugly and as she moved the light bounced off something, catching Javier's attention and drawing it to her visible wrist. He stared in abject shock at the two centimeter metal cufflink fastened to Keelan's sleeve.

The carved initials 'KR' glinted back at him

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god I don't even have words for how sorry I am that this happened so late aaaa you guys deserve way better than this. But here you have it. The last chapter of An Heir And In The Same Breath Regret. Some suspension of disbelief may be required for the scene in interrogation with Kevin and Keelan, but bear with me.
> 
> It's been quite the ride friends, and I would really appreciate if you'd leave me a review! Thanks for hangin in this whole time.
> 
> \- Lexie

> god grew lonely
> 
> in the days before light
> 
> so he made himself  **an heir**
> 
> **and in the same breath**
> 
> invented  **regret.**
> 
> \- tumblr user screwballdame

“Shit.”

Pinching shut his right eye so that the blood slicking the side of his face wouldn't blind him, Kevin peered up at Javier, crouching beside him and staring at the woman across the room.

“Y'kay?”

The mashed up word came out unsteady and rattled, and the thought 'priorities, Kevin, I am not the one with a head injury here,' flitted through Javier's mind. His eyes were still riveted to the murderer staring him down from several desks away.

Keelan Ryan had killed one brother, framed and destroyed the life of the other, and he had absolutely no way on Earth to prove it. There was no evidence on which he could make an arrest that would stick, but when Keelan started edging towards the door he had to do _something_.

“It's her!” he shouted, prompting Keelan to break into an all out run. The room exploded in a flurry of motion as Kate – eyes wide, seeing the cufflink picture, remembering Keelan's initials, and seeing her start to run all at once – took off after her. Her shoes scuffed the polished floor as she put every ounce of frustration and panic of this case into catching Keelan. Closing a hand around the woman's wrist and wrenching her back had to be one of the most satisfying moments of Kate's life to date.

“Keelan Ryan,” she hissed, snapping silver bracelets on the protesting woman, in the process snagging one of the cufflinks and accidentally knocking it to the floor, “you are under arrest for the murder of Connor Ryan. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?” A brisk shake produced Keelan's response, glaring balefully at Kate.

“Yes I do _._ I want a lawyer. You've got no god damn proof.”

“Maybe,” Kate snarled, feeling the nauseating burning feeling of hate clenched in her stomach. “But we're gonna find some, and you're gonna hang for this. That's a promise.”

Keelan smirked at her brother as she was marched past him. “Yeah? We'll see about that.”

Seconds later, the phone in Javier's pocket started to ring. It took him a moment to realize that it was indeed _his_ phone that was ringing, then fish it out and open it. He was sure his voice sounded hollow and shocked – that's how he felt – when he said, “Esposito.”

“He's _too short_.”

“What?”

“Kevin's too short. Javi, it's Lanie, I think I may have found your miracle.”

Javier looked to the man blinking unsteadily behind him, trying to make sense of what just happened. If what Lanie was saying was right, if she really had found the miracle they needed to save Kevin, then this was almost over.

“Keelan killed him. She killed Connor,” Kevin said softly. Javier nodded.

“She did. And we can prove it.”

Looking at the chaos that had erupted about them and making an executive decision for the sake of Kevin's wellbeing, Javier caught and held Kate's gaze from across the room. He jerked his head back towards the interview room (the one with the spiderweb cracks laid through the glass of the window). She nodded shortly back at him, conveying her message easily with one movement.

_Get him out of here._

“C'mon, Kev. Up you go,” Javier muttered, carefully pulling Kevin out of his position awkwardly slumped back against the wall. The dazed man followed him without question or protest, allowing Javier to guide him through the door into the relative quiet of the room.

It took a bit of fumbling around in pockets to produce the handcuff key that he used to release Kevin's hands, relieving the pressure of the biting metal. The cuffs had broken skin in a couple of places, and Javier busied himself looking for the First Aid kit that was surely in the room somewhere. Neither of them spoke. The sounds of Brady shouting and Victoria Gates responding in a calmer – if no less forceful – voice were muffled by the walls of the dim, near-empty room.

Finding he kit and walking back over to Kevin, Javier pulled him to the low couch on which grieving families usually sat, being interviewed. Still wordless, Javier gently took both of Kevin's hands, turning them over to get a look at the worst of the damage. Careful, efficient fingers wrapped gauze around torn skin, securing it with medical tape.

A glance upwards showed him the ragged gash on Kevin's temple, the blood trickling down from the lip he'd bitten hard when he'd been thrown into the glass.

“You should see a doctor.”

At hearing the softly spoken advice, Kevin's head jerked slightly, shocked out of whatever reverie he was lost in.

“I'm fine.”

“Kevin, I've known you for a real long time, and this is about the least 'fine' I have ever seen you.”

Snorting, shoulders slumping further, Kevin avoided his eyes. “Yeah, I guess you're right.”

“Of course I am,” Javier teased lightly.

They were quiet once more, Javier looking at Kevin and Kevin looking down at his own bandaged wrists. It was with lead in his chest that Javier silently admitted to himself that this was one blow he didn't know if Kevin could bounce back from.

It scared the hell out of him.

…

It was the angle of the wound track that eventually exonerated Kevin, but when it came to finding the evidence that threw out Ross Denver's assertion that Kevin had indeed bought the gun, the credit for that fell to Martha. She had brought lunch for everybody, looking briefly to the mountain of data they still needed to mine through, find some way to connect it all to Keelan.

The hardest part was going to be discrediting the dealer's ID of Kevin. It might have been a false ID, but the Ryan family could afford the best defense attorneys in the country, and any lawyer worth their salt could use that ID and the lack of evidence against her in general to get her let off. Which would put them right back where they'd started – with Kevin squarely in the sights of the prosecution.

That's where an offhand remark from Martha set in motion a series of revelations that would lead to exactly the proof they needed.

“What did they do when they tried to frame you, Richard? It is in the past we often find solutions needed in the present, you know.”

Rick stared at Martha blankly for a few moments before flying into motion. He took her face in his hands and kissed her soundly on the cheek.

“Mother you're a genius!” he called over his shoulder as he rushed off to find Kate.

Martha exchanged a glance and a raised eyebrow with Alexis. Both shook their heads, continuing on their way out to the car, towards home where they would wait for the call saying Keelan was done for and Kevin was officially free.

…

“The Society for New York Actors!” Rick shouted, slamming a print-out down on the desk in front of Kate triumphantly. She looked up at him, exhausted. “Oliver R. Macallaster!”

“What?”

Javier was in the interview room with the broken window once more, having left Keelan alone to stew in her own thoughts while he talked to Kevin. That left Kate alone at her desk while Rick walked his family out, doing everything she could to find a shred of evidence that implicated Keelan. So far no luck, and she was becoming increasingly frustrated.

“I knew I'd met the family before, and that's where. The charity benefit for The Society for New York Actors, it's a yearly gala auction and I know I've seen the Ryans there before, at least twice. I looked it up and Keelan is part of the board, the New Yorker did an article on it like two weeks ago.”

“What's your point, Castle?” asked Kate shortly.

“Well think about when Peter Donovan framed me. What did he do? He-”

“Hired a look alike,” Kate finished for him. “Oh my god. So what you're implying is-”

“That Keelan used her position to find an actor to buy the gun that killed Connor, exactly.” Rick slid the printout towards her, one of the faces on it circled in red sharpie.

The grinning face of Oliver R. Macallaster stared up at them. With blue eyes, short gelled dark brown hair, and a bright, happy expression, to a drug addled dealer Macallaster could have been Kevin Ryan's identical twin.

“We need to find Oliver Macallaster.”

…

Finding Oliver Macallaster was proving to be more difficult than anticipated – apparently actors don't answer their phones – and Kate couldn't help but think how even if they could find him, he might not know who had hired him. The only way to completely ensure Keelan went down for the murder and the prosecution never went after Kevin was a confession.

Which is why time saw Kate sitting in the interrogation room across from Keelan Ryan and her lawyer. She'd tried every tactic in the book, and nothing was working. The evidence was laid out in front of them, and there was one card she had left to play. Swallowing her hope and feeling it lodge in her collarbone, Kate crossed her legs and laced her fingers together on the table in front of her.

“Macallaster.”

“Excuse me?” the lawyer scoffed.

“Shut up Landry,” Keelan snapped, throwing a hand to the side to whack lightly into the man's chest, silencing him. He shot her a withering look and did as he was told. Kate got the feeling that Tristan Landry wasn't overly fond of his client. She could relate.

“We have Macallaster, Keelan. Oliver Macallaster. The actor you hired to impersonate your brother Kevin. We've got him, it's all over. The best thing you can do for yourself now is confess. We can work something out with the DA. No need for a trial. Do you really want a trial, Keelan? Do you want to drag the family name through the mud like that?”

It took some time, but Keelan finally agreed to talk. Her lawyer advised and advised against it, but she was hearing none of it, going so far as to kick the man out. Facing Kate, Keelan leant back in her chair, fixing the detective with what could only be described as a smug look.

“Sure. I'll talk. Fine. You know what, I'll tell you every damn detail.” Just as Kate was about to respond, Keelan held up a hand, stalling her. “Ah ah ah. On one condition.”

Kate's heart sank. “What condition?”

“I'll tell you whatever you want to hear, but there's only one person I'll say it to.”

Leaning forward, Keelan braced her hands against the interrogation room table. She grinned, and Kate thought that she'd never in her life met anyone who looked more like a snake.

“My brother. I want to talk to my brother.”

...

“No. Absolutely not.” Javier was already shaking his head before Kate had even finished informing them of Keelan's demand. “That's out of the freakin' question, what the hell makes her think she is in _any_ position to just-”

“I'll do it.”

Every head in the room turned sharply to stare at Kevin.

“I don't think that's a good idea,” Javier warned. With an apprehensive heave of unsteady shoulders, Kevin stood straighter and looked at Javier.

“This is something I have to do, Javi. For me and... And for Connor.” Looking across to the foreboding door leading to the interrogation room where Keelan waited, Kevin stood up. “This ends now.”

“If you think you can do this, then just-” Kate broke off, standing in front of Kevin. “Just know that when this is over, we're here.”

Glancing around, Kevin saw Rick and Javier nodding along with her.

“Thanks,” he said through a tight throat.

“Let's go see your sister, then.”

Following Kate out the room, Javier and Rick behind them, Kevin thought that if he did have a sister, she wasn't in that room.

“Just to warn you,” murmured Kate quietly as Rick and Javier slipped into observation, “your parents are behind the glass.”

An involuntary cringe that knocked his hand to the side and caused him to miss the door handle ran through Kevin upon hearing that. He shot a reluctant look to the door Rick and Javier disappeared through. Angrily, he shook himself, head throbbing where Brady had thrown him into the window. Years after he'd gotten himself out of that house and still just the knowledge that his parents were watching him had the power to turn him back into that angry, hurt kid again.

“Are you sure about this?”

Meeting Kate's worried gaze, Kevin stilled for a moment, hand resting on the doorknob. He thought about Jenny, his unborn son or daughter, Javier, the rest of the family he had built up in place of the one he'd run from.

He opened the door.

Keelan looked up upon hearing the soft creak of the hinges, a bark of sharp laughter sounding through the room.

“Wow, little brother, daddy dearest really did a number on you, didn't he?” She cocked her head to the side, studying the marks on Kevin's face. “I always said one day he would. Warned you.” The singsong tone of the last two words sent a chill down Kevin's spine.

“Keelan, what happened to Connor?”

“Oh it's all about Connor isn't it... All the time, Connie, Connie, Connie. Fine. Hope you're listening back there, mom and dad. You're gonna want to hear this.”

“Keelan I swear to god drop the theatrics and tell me what you did to our brother.” Connecting words, things that would remind the suspect that the victim had been a person. That they had known the body in the morgue before they died. Kevin wasn't hopeful it would work on her. He knew Keelan too well for that.

“I would think your coroner already figured out what was done to him.” She was dancing around the confession they needed. 'What was done to him' not 'what I did to him'. Keelan was playing with them, toying them along like puppets on strings, and Kevin was done with it. He was _done_ being manipulated and jerked around by people with the last name Ryan.

“Confession. We need a confession.”

With her eyes locked on him the entire time, Keelan slowly dragged the microphone recorder on the desk between them to rest directly in front of her. She spoke in tones as icy as the blue eyes fixed squarely on Kevin.

“I killed my brother. I killed Connor Ryan.”

The rush of relief that whooshed through Kevin's veins was frozen solid by the chilly words that followed.

“I called him and said I had big news, and he should meet me by a cafe down the street from the construction site. When he was walking down the sidewalk, I shouted his name. Connor thought I was in trouble, came running. When he rounded the corner, I grabbed him by the shoulder and jammed the knife in as deep as it would go. Did it again after, but the bastard kept on trying to get away.”

As she spoke, Keelan never once looked away from Kevin. Kate could feel an urge welling inside her to grab Kevin's arm and pull him out of the room, away from the woman enjoying every second of describing their brother's murder to him.

“He kept trying to go for his phone or run, so.” Keelan shrugged, sitting back with an easy smirk on her face. “I shot him.” Her hand slapped down on the metal table with a crack like a gunshot. “Bang! Bye bye Connie.”

So badly Kate wanted to step in, to put a stop to this now they had their confession. But she could see that Kevin still needed answers, and she wasn't about to deny him that.

When Kevin managed to force his voice to work, the single word he got out was rough and hoarse.

“Why?”

“Why what?” Keelan asked innocently. “You're gonna have to be just a tad more specific.”

“Why would you kill Connor?”

The creepy smile that had, until now, resided on her face faltered then vanished entirely, twisting her lips into a snarl.

“Ever since I was born, I've always done everything exactly how I was supposed to.” Seeing Kevin open his mouth like he was about to say something, Keelan rolled her eyes and silenced him with a glare. “Chill, kiddo, I'm getting to it.”

The familiar nickname sounded like poison dripping from her mouth.

“Anyway, as I said, I did... everything right. And then when I was thirteen, Connor was born.” Keelan spat out her dead little brother's name like it burned her tongue to say it. “I already knew you were a fuck up, it was pretty obvious from the get go you were never cut out to be a _Ryan_. So I was the only choice left. Except... Except for Connor. Perfect Connor. Perfect, obedient, _precious_ Connor. They didn't need me any more, oh no they had a _son_. But with him out of the way, well...”

“Everything would go to you,” Kevin finished in a deadened, emotionless voice.

“I would get what I'm due,” the woman corrected. She studied Kevin's face then sighed. “Wasn't like I hated him, for all he was a pathetic jackass who earned none of what life handed him. Boy never worked a day in his life from what I saw, not ever as hard as I did.”

“He didn't deserve to die.”

“Oh grow up, Kevin. People don't always get what they deserve.” With a disgusted toss of her head, Keelan looked high past her brother's shoulder, to where their parents were surely standing behind the glass. “Isn't that right, mom and dad?” Looking back and seeing the horrified expression on Kevin's face, she snorted. “You always did live in some bizarre-ass fantasy land where good is good and bad is bad and fairy tale endings can happen if you just wish hard enough. I mean Connor at least had the nerve to be a cutthroat bastard about it, you were always the weak one after all-”

“Keelan that's _enough_.”

Glad that her friend had intervened – as she was about to herself if Keelan had gone just one step further – Kate breathed a near silent sigh of relief. She was struck by the sudden thought that it was a damn good thing that it was her chaperoning this particular interview, not Javier. What the killer at the table across from Kevin said next halted whatever else she was thinking.

“I'd have killed you first if you hadn't gotten your worthless ass disowned, baby brother.”

“Alright, this is over,” Kate snapped. She could stay objective to a point, reduce the furnace burning white hot insider her to an ice, solid and still in her chest, but there came a point when enough was enough, and not even the best compartmentalizer could sit and not react. “We've got our confession, this is over. Come on Kevin.”

As he stood to follow her out of the room, Keelan's voice sounded behind him.

“Don't you want to know why I framed you?'

Kevin's hand stilled on the doorknob for a second before he spoke, without even turning to look at her.

“No. I don't. I don't care. Goodbye, Keelan.”

With the squeak of ill maintained hinges sounding, Kevin and Kate stepped out into the hallway and allowed the door to swing shut behind them. From the moment they set foot outside the interrogation room they could hear Brady Ryan's angry shouting in observation.

The door slammed open with a bang that caused Kevin to flinch so hard it looked as if he'd been struck. Brady's voice boomed out preceding the appearance of the man himself. Javier was shouting something after him, seconds behind Brady as the Ryan family patriarch stormed up to his surviving son.

“This is on _you_ ,” Brady snarled, and from the way his eyes went wide and glassy, breathing rapid and shallow, Kate could guess that the only thing Kevin wanted right now was to be as far away from his father as possible.

Javier's hand closed around Brady's arm, yanking him away and slamming a palm into the center of his chest, sending the man stumbling back and putting a couple feet of extra space between Kevin and Brady.

“It's fine, Javi.” The voice that drew Javier's attention was shaky but determined. “I need to have a _conversation_ with my _dad_.”

“Kevin-”

“I'll be fine. This'll never be over if I don't.” He never took his eyes off Brady as he spoke. Walking across the hallway, he held open the break room door. Brady stalked furiously inside and whirled around when he heard the door close.

“Say your piece now, Brady, you'll never get another chance to.”

“It should have been you,” Brady hissed. Kevin shook his head, looking at the wall a couple of feet to Brady's left. “It _should have_. You heard her. If she'd gone for your first, my son could still be alive. It should had been you, if you hadn't gone and gotten yourself disowned-”

“ _Shut up_.” Something inside Kevin had snapped, and he was _done_. “No _._ ”

“Kevin.” Brady's voice was a warning, but Kevin was having none of it.

“ _No_. You don't get to do this to me. I didn't _get_ myself disowned, _dad_. You signed papers and you made it official, you didn't want me anymore and I did exactly what you asked, I got out of your life, out of all of your lives, and I _never came back_. Everything I did, I did myself. No matter how overwhelmed I felt or scared I was or hard it got, I did it _alone_. Not anymore. I have a family here, I have a life here. And you do not _get_ to waltz in and tell me it is _my fault_ that your 'good' son is dead. As far as either of us are concerned you only ever had _one_.”

Brady didn't repond, too shocked by Kevin's outburst to muster any words.

“Now get out, and don't _ever_ contact me again.” For a moment, Brady seemed to hesitate. “GET. OUT,” Kevin practically roared, throwing open the door, shoulders heaving.

Without another word to the son who had just denounced him once and for all, Brady turned and walked out of the room. As soon as he disappeared around the corner, Kevin's knees gave out and he went down. Hard. He dropped onto the couch like a stone pitched into a lake. The world around him blurred and pulsed. Nothing felt real. Sound seemed like it was being filtered through water, distorted and different.

It wasn't until a hand touched his shoulder that Kevin became aware that someone else was in the room. The person was saying his name, quiet and concerned, but Kevin was hardly processing anything. Everything was very, very hot and then very, very cold, and he didn't know what was happening. Someone was crouched down in front of him, a blurry face peering worriedly at his own. It seemed to swim and blur worse for a second before sharpening into Javier. A brief measure of relief spread through Kevin's chest, but was soon overwhelmed by the turmoil engulfing him.

His mouth gaped slightly open as if he was trying to say something, but the words would not be forced out past a choked throat. He thought he could hear Javier asking if he was okay, but his best friend's voice still sounded miles away. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a small voice told him he's probably having a panic attack. Ignoring that voice, Kevin focused on trying to get in enough breath to speak.

“It's over.” Kevin's voice is a wrecked gasp.

“Yeah,” his partner sighed, and Kevin felt an arm drop heavily across his shoulders as Javier settled in beside him. “It's over.”

Closing his eyes, Kevin tried to focus on Javier's grounding presence, tried to breathe with the rhythm of his friend's hand rubbing his shoulder. Javier's hand went up and Kevin breathed in, exhaling when the hand went down.

“There you go,” Javier said evenly. “You're just fine. Everything's gonna be just fine. Just keep breathing, and we can take everything else as it comes, alright? Just breathe.”

Completely exhausted, Kevin slumped sideways against his friend's side, the other detective's steady support the only thing preventing him from sprawling completely to the floor.

“It's over. It's _over_.”

…

After Keelan's confession, the rest of the details fell quickly into place. Oliver Macallaster had rapidly owned up to having bought the gun, under the guise of filming an audition for a cop drama show Keelan had supposedly arranged for him. He'd had no idea that the dealer had been real, or even that the gun was anything more than a prop. Keelan's alibi, in the form of her best friend Alisha Mendez, had crumbled shortly after that.

Kate had recalled their strange interaction, wherein the woman had provided an unsolicited alibi for a non-suspect, and phoned Alisha on a hunch. Sure enough, the woman had no clue that a murder had taken place. Whens he had seen Kate and Rick at RGI, she had assumed they were friends of Keelan's husband Desmond.

Keelan had spun quite the story for Alisha about the night of Connor's murder. She'd told her friend in confidence that she was cheating on Des – not a hard story to believe, given Desmond Linder was hardly what one would call an attentive husband. Keelan had told of a handsome investment banker she'd met at a charity dinner and began an affair with, begging Alisha to watch both their children for the night and cautioning her that Des was close with several members of the NYPD and wouldn't be above taking advantage of that to find out if his wife was stepping out on him.

The truth had poured from Alisha along with a very sincere apology for her abrasive behavior, once she discovered Keelan had taken advantage of her and used her as an alibi for murder.

Several hours post the tying of loose ends, after Keelan had triumphantly been handed over to booking, Kate stood in her fiance's dining room with the entire team plus Martha, Alexis, and Jenny in attendance. They were milling around making small talk, waiting for dinner to be done and enjoying the relief that came with knowing the nightmare was finally over.

Making a decision she'd been sitting on since arriving at Rick's that night, Kate walked over to Kevin, who was watching Javier teach Alexis and Jenny how to play finger football with a folded piece of paper.

She leant up against the wall next to him, nudging his shoulder with hers.

“Can't have been an easy thing to do, back there. With Keelan.”

Kevin shrugged and sighed, and some of the tension that had bled from his stiff shoulders returned. Kate almost regretted saying it before he sighed again, and relaxed back, head rolling agains the wall to look at her.

“It wasn't.”

“It was probably for the best you didn't stick around to hear whatever she had to say about why she framed you. I can't see how that could've ended well.”

One of Kevin's shoulders hitched up and down and he chuckled softly. “Actually, I already know why she did it. I mean, you're right. It wouldn't have ended well, but. I already knew.” Seeing Kate's raised eyebrow, Kevin straightened up and shoved his fidgety hands in his pockets.

“About a week before Connor died, I got a call from a news outlet, said they wanted to fact check some stuff for a story they were doing on one of our cases. I didn't say anything to you guys cause you weren't here when I left. And when I got there... They didn't want to talk to me about a case. They'd somehow found out that I was _that_ Kevin Ryan, and they wanted to stage some sort of... Surprise reunion. Y'know. Presumed dead heir to Ryan empire alive, hear the shocking story tonight at nine, or whatever. I walked in, saw them, and...” He swallowed and cleared his throat before going on. “I froze. As soon as I got my shit together, I turned and ran. None of them saw me, except Keelan. We made eye contact for about a half a second. And she's always been the opportunist, so. There you go, perfect opportunity.”

“Wow,” Kate breathed, trying to process that information. “So that's why you were acting so weird that day.”

“Yeah. That's why.”

Impulsively, Kate slung an arm around him, tugging Kevin into a quick half-hug.

“You kept it together really well,” she said, releasing him. “You did good.”

Kevin snorted, a quick huff of breath leaving him harshly. “Sure.”

He's quiet for a few long moments, hands jammed deep in his pockets. Something about his expression is odd, a mix of regret and something else that Kate had seen on his face a lot since finding his brother's body in the alleyway. Frowning at him, she turned a little further to face him.

“What's on your mind?”

“Thinking about Connor.”

She kept quiet, waiting for him to go on.

“I hope he hated me," he said softly. "I hope they left him with enough humanity to know he deserved better than that, better than his big brother abandoning him. For his sake, Kate, I hope Connor hated me."

Kate didn't know what she could possibly say to that.

A few minutes later, just as the food was getting set out on the table, Rick jogged over, catching Kevin's arm and pulling him into the living room. He pressed a piece of paper into his friend's hand. Kevin looked down at the phone number scrawled in Rick's distinctive handwriting then looked up at the man himself oddly.

“What's this?”

“Esposito mentioned you had some. Inspiration. When it came to becoming a cop. Someone you hadn't spoken to in a real long time, someone you missed a lot. Well, I know a guy who knows a guy who knows how to find people, and... If you want, this is hers.”

Kevin couldn't find any words to say in response before Rick had turned and swept out of the room, saying something to Alexis. He stared down at the paper in his hand, remembering blue eyes and dark brown, curly hair, a bright smile, and a voice saying to him 'you've gotta find your own way in the world, Kevin.' Taking out his phone, Kevin dialed the number with shaking fingers, and listened to it ring, half of him wanting to snap the phone shut before anyone could answer.

The line clicked on.

“Hello?” asked a soft, warm voice. He stood for a second, the phone pressed to his ear, mouth dry. The woman on the other end waited a few seconds before speaking again. “Hello? Is anybody there?”

“Hi,” he said in a voice that cracked on the vowel. “Hi, Aunt Fiona. It's. It's Kevin.”


End file.
